The Park
by at-kb
Summary: Harry loses his memories of being a wizard; instead, he believes he's spent the last four years at Stonewall High. Now he's got to encounter the magical world and his friends all over again . . .
1. Two Pasts

**The Park:**

A Story of Innocence and Experience

**Summary**: This story takes place during the summer after _Goblet of Fire_. Harry loses his memories of being a wizard; instead, he believes he's spent the last four years at Stonewall High. When the Order finally finds out what's happened and brings him back to Grimmauld Place, Harry must encounter the magical world and all his friends again, through new eyes. Meanwhile, the Order is desperately trying to find out who did this to Harry and, more importantly, how they can bring the old Harry back.

**Content**: A little bit of swearing. A small touch of angst, perhaps. A few hints of romance, all of which happen to be het; your interpretation of Sirius and Lupin's friendship is up to you.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own any of this stuff.

**Author's note**: I hope you enjoy this story. Even if you don't, though, reviews are always much appreciated. : ) Now, onto the fic.

* * *

Harry rested his cheek against the cold links of one of the swing's chains. Had its seat always been so narrow? Long ago, he'd often caught sight of the play park from the back seat of Aunt Petunia's car and _dreamt _of being one of those kids there, his patient mother waiting on a bench and warning him not to swing too high. Now he was sixteen, and too old for it, but there was nowhere else to go. He was barely even welcome in the house.

So, even though he wasn't supposed to, he'd come here to sit and think about –

Had that been a person in the twilight, along the bushes there? Dudley's gang, he thought, his stomach clenching, but when he turned to look the shadows were completely still.

He leaned back against the chain, pushing himself back and forth with the toe of one trainer. He'd come here to think about – school. He'd come here to think about school.

It wasn't a very pleasant place, Stonewall Comp. Even if he hadn't put people off right from the start with his elephant-skin-looking uniform and tatty book bag and broken NHS glasses, the fact that he was forbidden to go round anyone else's house after school (let alone bring anyone back to Privet Drive!) meant that he'd ended up spending a lot of his lunchtimes in the library, which was always deserted. Still, he hadn't done so badly, using his slightness to keep unnoticed, for the main part. After the initial being laughed at, even the really scary Year Elevens with parole officers had forgotten he existed, and that had been better than more years of being a punching bag for some new Dudley.

If anyone had asked his teachers about him, he thought, they probably wouldn't have much to say. Harry Potter? Small boy, I think. Yes, I taught him. Quiet, but he usually did quite well.

To his surprise, he felt a tear trickle down his cheek, sliding down between his skin and the chain. At least it was dark; nobody could see.

It was just that all the memories he had to think about weren't much. Girls he'd admired from a distance. A few times, during group projects, when he'd felt as though he had friends. The peaceful interlude of the long, long walk to school.

The street lights flickered on in a circle around the park, and Harry sprang to his feet. What had he been thinking? He wasn't allowed out after dark, in case he made mischief. How had it gotten this late? He could have sworn it had been light just a few moments ago.

* * *

"Look!" said Hermione, pointing over the kitchen table. "Pigwidgeon's brought yours back too."

"Oh, great," said Ron. "I told Dumbledore Harry was going to take it out on us if we kept not telling him anything. _It's too dangerous. The owls aren't safe_. I bet Dumbledore could _make_ them safe."

"But do you think Harry's really returning our letters unopened?" pressed Hermione, checking hers over.

"Well, yeah," said Ron, reaching for another piece of toast. "What else could it be?"

"Maybe someone's stopping them, like that time with Dobby. Maybe someone's _reading _them and then making them look unopened," said Hermione, her tea arrested halfway to her mouth.

"Good thing we're not putting any information in them, then," said Ron, buttering his toast. "Where's the marmalade?"

"Last I saw, the twins had it," said Hermione. "Really, though, Ron—this could be serious."

"Oh, come on," said Ron. "This isn't like second year. There's Order members watching him all the time. I bet nothing goes on around Harry that Dumbledore doesn't know about. Harry's just being tetchy."

"Hmm," said Hermione, dissatisfied.

"Harry returned my letter," said Sirius, sitting down with the letter flat in front of him as if it were his breakfast.

"He did it to all of us," grumbled Ron.

"Have some toast, Sirius," said Hermione, pushing the plate over to Sirius.

"Well, I'm sure Dumbledore knows best," said Lupin, pulling out a chair next to Sirius, although he didn't sound completely convinced himself.

* * *

"I'm not going back to school?" gasped Harry. Usually he tried to keep as quiet as possible during these rare interviews with his aunt and uncle, but this time he'd almost fallen off the edge of their pristine sofa.

"I don't know why we didn't think of it sooner," huffed his Uncle Vernon. "You've got to get a job, my boy. Learn to earn a living like a decent person instead of mooching off your relatives."

"I happen to know a woman whose husband is a supermarket manager," said Aunt Petunia with slight distaste. "They're prepared to offer you a position for as long as you're able to behave properly."

"So no funny business!" roared Vernon.

"What funny business?" asked Harry, puzzled.

"Don't question me, my boy!" shouted his uncle, who, admittedly, looked slightly puzzled himself. "None of this . . . snottiness, laziness, none of the rubbish you got from your parents. Or you'll hear about it from me!"

"Yes, Uncle Vernon," said Harry.

"Right," said his uncle.

"You start on Monday," said his aunt. "You can walk there yourself."

"Get some exercise, scrawny boy like you," said his uncle in passing as he got up.

"MUUUM!" bellowed Dudley from upstairs. "CAN YOU GET ME ANOTHER DIET COKE? WITH ICE?"

"Of course, Diddyums!" fluted Aunt Petunia, and rushed to the kitchen.

Harry got up off the sofa at once, but then he just found himself standing in the middle of his uncle and aunt's living room. He didn't think he was technically allowed to leave school yet, but he had to do what Uncle Vernon said as long as he lived with the Dursleys, and he had nowhere else to go. In any case, Aunt Petunia's friend's husband would certainly fiddle the paperwork so that he was the right age.

Harry had gone over this list thousands of times in his cupboard: no other family. No friends who would take him in. No other choice.

He wasn't particularly good at any one subject, but he'd thought he could have been a teacher. Perhaps he could have worked for Social Services, making sure that kids like him found happy families. In a quiet place like Surrey, he might have been a policeman. He wouldn't have minded walking down the street, nodding to the locals and once in a while arresting a miniature Dudley for tagging the bus stop enclosures.

Of course, he'd once dreamed of leaving Surrey, but that was long ago. He'd always known, really, that he would be here forever.

He would have liked, at least, to finish his GCSEs.

But quickly, very quickly, he found these new ideas becoming normal, accepted fact, and the visions of Harry-teacher and Harry-Social-Services-worker and Harry-policeman . . . were gone.

And this, too, had happened thousands of times: finding that he had accepted something he had thought of, only days or hours or seconds before, as unbearable.

* * *

"What's Harry _doing_?" whispered Tonks, currently disguised as a completely average and unmemorable person, to her Harry-watching companion, Hestia Jones.

"He has left the house before," said Hestia, concern knotting her black eyebrows together under her wide-brimmed sunhat.

"But that was always in the evening, to go to the park," said Tonks. "I don't know _where_ he's going now."

"If we follow him much longer, it's going to look suspicious," murmured Hestia.

Harry sped over a zebra crossing and hurried on down the street.

"I'd have thought that Harry would be paying more attention to people around him, considering the danger he knows he's in," said Tonks.

"So would I, actually," said Hestia, after a moment. Then she elbowed her friend. "Look, he's going into that place."

"Oh, it's just a supermarket," said Tonks, grinning. "His aunt obviously sent him shopping. Case solved."

"Still, you should follow him in. I'll Disillusion myself and wait here," said Hestia, heading for the shadows behind the building. She pressed the back of her hand to one of her pink cheeks. "It's so _hot_ already, and it's not even eight a.m. yet."

Tonks strode toward the supermarket doors, balked a little at the way they opened automatically, and then passed into the cool air. "Where are you, Harry?" she whispered to herself, searching the aisles, seething as they were with Muggles of all sizes pushing trolleys and picking up toddlers and talking, talking into their hands.

* * *

By noon, the heat was shimmering over the car park as Harry corralled scattered trolleys and pushed long snakes of them back to their harbors.

He had gotten to go inside, in the cool, to mop up some spilled apple juice. Then, as he had been stacking some baked bean tins into an enormous baked bean tin monolith, a short man who Harry couldn't help thinking of as _ratty_-looking had come over and _sniffed_ the tins. "Special offer, two for one," Harry had told him as cheerfully as he could (as per the manager's instructions). The man had taken the tin from his hand, smirking, but when Harry had turned to see what he was smirking about he had gone.

Harry must just have been particularly absent-minded that day, because later, in the car park, he'd almost run a long snake of trolleys into a tall, prepossessing woman who Harry could have _sworn_ had just appeared in front of them. Aunt Petunia would not have approved of her long, tangled hair, but her hooded eyes would have appeared quite sultry . . . on anyone but her. Harry apologized repeatedly for almost knocking the woman over, but she just smiled and looked at him and, once she was out of his sight, laughed. As hot as it was, he almost felt himself shivering.

"You look done in, sweetheart," a friendly checkout lady had told him at the door. "Have a little rest. Come with me—I'm just going out to smoke, anyway."

"Thanks," swallowed Harry, who had been determined not to be _lazy_. He followed her out to a spot of shade between the bins.

For a moment, he had been astonished by her furiously red hair, but then on second glance he'd noticed the centimeters of steel-gray at her roots. "I'm Sue," she said kindly, puffing on her cigarette. "You look awfully young to be working here, love. I hope you don't mind my saying so. Then again, my boys always did look around ten. Then, suddenly, around sixteen, zoom! They were taller than I was. You boys are always that way. What's your name, then?"

"Harry," said Harry, hoping that he didn't still look around ten, as he was fifteen.

"You've just started here? I've never seen you before."

"Yes," said Harry, feeling a little tongue-tied.

"This your first job?"

"Yes," said Harry.

"Well, don't worry about having a break when you need one," said Sue. "And if Mr. Wattleton has a go at you, you tell me, all right?" She sighed, exhaling a long stream of smoke into the air.

Harry thought he heard someone coughing, but there was nobody there.

"Thanks," said Harry, feeling that he was about to choke on the warm feeling flooding his chest.

* * *

"What's going on now?" whispered Ginny urgently, leaning over the stair banisters.

"Shh!" her brothers told her in unison.

"We can't hear into the kitchen, but they've been doing some talking in the corridor," said Fred.

"Something _has_ happened with Harry," George told her.

"He's all right, isn't he?"

"We think so," said Hermione. "Here, have my Ear. I'll take a turn with the doxies."

Through the Extendable Ear, Ginny heard Tonks finishing: "But they're his guardians, sir. He can't disobey them – not unless he wants to be chucked out on the street, which isn't what we want, either, sir."

"Nonetheless," said Professor Dumbledore's voice, very quietly, "Harry should have informed us. He knows that he puts himself in danger every time he leaves his aunt's house."

"_More than twelve hours_!" growled Professor Moody. "Right out there in public! And Tonks tells me he was talking to a Muggle—"

"Well, what's wrong with that, Mad-Eye?" argued Tonks.

"The Death Eaters want to kill him!" roared the grizzled Auror, apparently furious beyond coherent discussion.

"Harry is quite angry with us at the moment, I believe," Ginny heard Lupin's soft voice interject. "He has not been answering any of our owl post."

There was a pause. "I wasn't aware of this," said Dumbledore's voice.

"We've been keeping him in the dark, keeping him shut out from his friends—his life," said Sirius fiercely. "From affairs that intimately concern him."

Ginny thought she heard a muffled, reprimanding, _"Sirius," _but then Dumbledore was saying, "At least, no harm was done today. I shall send an owl to Harry immediately. Perhaps it will be necessary to remove Harry from Privet Drive sooner than I had hoped."

Ginny retracted the ear as surreptitiously as possible and then soared up the stairs to find Hermione and Ron. "Harry's coming to Grimmauld Place!" she called into the doxy-infested room she hung, panting, from the doorframe.

"About time!" said Ron, swatting at a doxy.

"Oh, dear," said Hermione.

"What do you mean, _oh dear_?" said Ginny, picking up some Doxycide.

"Well, he's not going to be in a very good mood, is he?" said Hermione.

"I wouldn't be, either," said Ginny darkly. "He should have been here, with us."

"He'll get over it," Ron advised them, "once he's got away from those foul Muggles and had some of Mum's cooking."

"Maybe," admitted Hermione, suppressing a smile.

After half an hour's hurried effort to catch up on the doxy problem, there were renewed sounds of argument from the stairs.

"_No_, Sirius," echoed Kingsley Shacklebolt's deep, authoritative tones. "We cannot risk your being seen, even through the Muggles' windows. How would Harry feel if you died because of him?"

Ron, Hermione and Ginny had by now frozen in place in an attempt to hear as much as possible. Sirius, however, seemed to have made no response. The sound of stomping moved up the stairs, past the doxy-infested room and into Buckbeak's bedroom.

The two Weasleys and Hermione scurried back down to find the twins. There were a few moments of wrestling over the Extendable Ears.

"Remus, I'd like you to come," the Headmaster was saying.

"Albus, I—"

"Don't worry about your clothes," Dumbledore said kindly. "Harry trusts you." He went on, a little more loudly: "We'll limit our initial number to Kingsley, Remus and myself, in order to startle Harry's aunt and uncle as little as possible. However, should anything go amiss, I trust the rest of you will remain alert for our signal?"

"Of course, Albus," said Mr. Weasley.

"In that situation, please remember that your first priority is to use your Portkeys to bring Harry back to Grimmauld Place."

"You don't think it'll come to that?" Tonks broke in.

"Harry has not responded to my urgent letter—indeed, has not received it," said Dumbledore. "I cannot help but fear that something has occurred of which we are not aware."

The door creaked open.

Ron turned to the two girls. "Bugger," he breathed.

* * *

Looking out from the Dursleys' front step into Privet Drive, his back to Dumbledore's and Kingsley's, Lupin spotted Mrs. Figg at her kitchen window and gave her a surreptitious smile.

Dumbledore pressed the doorbell once, and the three of them heard a complicated little tune ringing through the house.

The door opened to reveal Petunia Dursley's horsey face, which took one look at Dumbledore's long hair and beard and half-moon glasses and snapped, "We don't want any!" The door slammed again.

"That went well, I thought," said Lupin wryly.

"Perhaps you'd like to try, Kingsley," said Dumbledore.

The Auror rang the bell again, and this time it was Vernon Dursley who opened it. Before he could say anything, however, Shacklebolt was greeting him in that calm bass of his: "Good evening, Mr. Dursley."

"Yes—" said Harry's uncle, his eyes darting to the weird-looking old man and poor-looking younger man behind Shacklebolt.

"We need to speak with you concerning your nephew, Harry," Shacklebolt began.

"We're not responsible for anything he does!" puffed Mr. Dursley in a near-shout. He was already going red in the face.

"Of course not," Shacklebolt agreed. "Just a few moments of your time, please." And then he was walking through the door, flanked by Dumbledore and Lupin, still scanning the empty street outside.

"Ah," gaped Harry's uncle, and followed them into his living room.

As summer was at its fullest peak, the glow in the west had not yet completely dimmed, despite the very late hour. Harry hurried home through the twilight, then, chomping out-of-date crisps – his only meal that day, since he had had neither food nor money from Aunt Petunia – that he'd scavenged from the supermarket's rubbish. He knew that his having been at work literally all day would not excuse him from his uncle's wrath should he arrive home past dark. He swallowed, and the crisps scratched his throat, the unfamiliar vinegar taste burning his dry lips.

He turned onto Privet Drive, and noticed at once that the lights were still on in the Dursleys' front room. This was unusual enough, but there were more than three shadows moving there, and as he drew closer he heard shouting. He broke into a run.

"Vernon, I've never met this man before!" Aunt Petunia sounded close to tears.

"D'you think I'll believe the word of some . . . _hippie_ before I believe my wife?" Uncle Vernon was roaring. "Get out, the lot of you! I don't know what your game is supposed to be but, believe me, the police will be hearing about this in the morning."

Harry scrambled with the lock, going over and over the day in his head. It couldn't have anything to do with him! He didn't know anyone who could possibly be classed as a hippie, even by Dursley standards.

Then there was a steady bass voice saying something Harry couldn't make out, and Aunt Petunia was screeching, "Call the police NOW, Dudders!"

"It's not working, Mum!"

"YOU'VE DONE SOMETHING TO THE PHONE, HAVEN'T YOU?" That was Uncle Vernon. He sounded apoplectic. Harry was sweating.

Harry stumbled past the door and into the living room just as a quiet, polite voice was saying, "Actually, I believe in England the number is nine-nine-nine, not nine-one-one."

Harry skidded into the room, and Dudley dropped the phone, which dangled just above the carpet, buzzing with the static of an unengaged line.

"YOU!" roared Uncle Vernon, grabbing him by the collar. "DO YOU KNOW THESE PEOPLE?"

For the first time, Harry looked at the strangers. There were three of them: first, a tall and eminently majestic-looking black man with a bald head. Judging by his expression of iron composure and tolerance, he seemed to have been in the middle of trying to reason with Harry's uncle, and Harry felt a flush of embarrassment at his relatives' rudeness.

Then there was a slightly less tall but very ancient-looking man with glasses. This was obviously the "hippie"; his silver hair and beard were waist-length, and his blue eyes twinkled with life and energy in a way Uncle Vernon would naturally despise. Completely oblivious to anyone else's presence, this man's eyes were completely filled with what seemed like concern and compassion for Harry. Under this gaze, Harry felt himself flush even further.

Last of all—and Harry almost missed him—was a still man in a clean but very worn-looking brown suit. His age was hard to pinpoint, because he seemed both young but, well, worn, just like his clothes. He glanced out of the window and then looked back at Harry with what appeared to be affection.

All this observation took only a second or two, though. Then his uncle was shaking Harry and beginning to repeat the question.

"I don't know them, I swear!" gasped Harry.

"Harry?" said the old man, stepping forward.

"Who are you?" Harry began, but his words began to blur. His shirt strained around the neck, where his uncle was still clutching it. He felt a soft bounce of carpet on his knees, and then the whole world—relatives, strangers, sitting room, the darkness of the street outside—draining away, with perhaps, at the last spark of consciousness, a pair of arms closing around him.


	2. Two Guardians

"It's been more than an hour," a quiet voice was stating simply, as if that implied something more.

"Shh, I think he's waking up," a female voice murmured.

Harry blinked and sat up. He seemed to be slumped in some sort of very soft chintz-covered easy chair, which was standing in the middle of—a kitchen? And a very old-fashioned kitchen, at that.

A rather expansive aproned bosom lowered itself to reveal the face of a tired-looking woman whose curly red hair was pinned up on top of her head. _Sue?_, Harry thought, but before his mouth responded he saw that the red of this woman's hair went right to her roots, and that, although motherly, her face was quite unlike that of the woman he'd met earlier that day.

"Do you recognize me?" asked the woman, steadying his shoulder with a careful hand.

"No," croaked Harry, straightening his glasses. "Who are you?" The circumstances of his fainting were fitting back together in his mind. "Where's Uncle Vernon? Where am _I? _What happened?" He swallowed, gripping the squashy arms of the chair.

"It's all right," the woman reassured him, and then stepped back to make way for the old man from his relatives' house. Before Harry could say anything, the blue eyes were looking deeply into his, in such an intimately personal way Harry fell speechless from surprise.

"Do you remember me?" asked the old man, still looking right into Harry's eyes.

"Yeah," managed Harry.

"From where?"

"My aunt and uncle's house." Harry felt his vision graying again and his heart began to thump. "Look, who are you?"

With an inscrutable expression on his face, the old man turned a kitchen chair around and sat opposite Harry. "I'm afraid your aunt and uncle may have given you the wrong impression," he began slowly. "We represent an alternate legal guardian for you."

"But I don't have any other relatives," said Harry.

"That is true, Harry. You have my deepest sympathies. However, you do have a godfather. It was your parents' wish that you be placed under his care, should any tragedy befall them."

The unobtrusive, worn-looking man knelt in the corner of his vision. "Here, drink this," he said softly, handing Harry a glass of water.

"Thanks," said Harry to his knees, and sipped. If the strangers had wanted to harm him, he tried to reason, they'd had every chance to do it while he was unconscious.

"Most unfortunately, however, your godfather has been extremely ill since not long after your parents' deaths," the strange old man continued, as if he was telling Harry a story. His eyes, though, seemed glossy, and Harry felt that the stranger was restraining very strong emotion indeed. "Upon his recent recovery, he endeavored to discover what had become of you. Your relatives did not answer his missives."

"Oh," said Harry, looking at the water glass he was holding on his knee. He explained, "They're sort of suspicious of anything to do with me or . . . my parents."

The old man nodded. "Therefore, your godfather—who is still somewhat too ill to travel—felt it necessary that you be paid a visit, and sent us. We are close friends of his—and your parents." At Harry's involuntary glance up, the man confirmed, "Yes, we knew them." He paused, but Harry's throat seemed to have closed up. He truly felt he might pass out again at any moment.

"Unfortunately, again, your aunt and uncle responded to our visit with . . . . unanticipated hostility. As you described, they mistrusted us as soon as we mentioned our connection to your parents and to you. Although we had met before, long ago, your aunt did not remember us. This led your uncle to conclude that our true purpose was to extort money from him."

Harry again felt the embarrassment at his guardians' behavior. "Sorry," he said to the water glass.

"There is absolutely no need to be sorry," said the old man firmly. "In any case, at this juncture your relatives wished us to leave. We, however, were concerned that someone of your age was out alone at such a late hour, and hoped not to depart until you had arrived home."

Harry nodded. "Then . . . I got home, and, um . . ."

"After your loss of consciousness, our friend Mr. Shacklebolt managed to convince your uncle and aunt that we desired nothing more from them than to remove you from their custody permanently. They acquiesced, and we bought you here, to your godfather's house. Mr. Lupin collected your belongings. They are here as well." The old man was examining Harry more intensely than ever. "Now, we wish to make it quite clear that, should you desire to return to your relatives rather than remain here, you are _entirely_ at liberty to do so."

Finally unable to avoid the gaze any longer, Harry looked up. The blue eyes were twinkling, and the old man reached forward and placed a hand over Harry's own. "I feel compelled to admit, however, that we and your godfather hope that you choose to stay."

"Yeah," said Harry at last. "I want to stay." And he buried his face in his sleeves, which, being part of Dudley's old sweater, were far too long for him.

It was exactly, _exactly_ as he'd always dreamed it: the fantasy he'd enacted a _thousand_ thousand times in his cupboard. Wonderful people, strangers had come to take him away, and as soon as he'd seen them he'd known that he liked them. And it had happened _instantly_. One moment, he'd been stuck there in Privet Drive, in that lifeless life, forever. The next, all of that had vanished. He might take his GCSEs. He might take his A-levels. He might . . . he might have someone who . . .

It was as if he had instantly learned to do magic. Suddenly, anything was possible.

"Come here, sweetheart," the red-haired woman was saying, and suddenly her arms were around him and he was trying to wipe away his tears before they reached her blouse.

Harry took a steadying breath, and the woman let him go again.

"I'm sorry," he said, scrubbing his eyes under his glasses with the corner of his sleeve. "Um . . . what's your name?" It sounded too blunt, especially considering he'd just wept all over her shoulder. Harry couldn't imagine what she thought of him, a fifteen-year-old boy behaving like that.

"I'm Molly Weasley, dear," she said. "I'm a friend of your godfather's. And, like Albus said, you don't have to apologize to us. We're as good as your family," she added, with conviction.

"So . . . you are . . ." began Harry, looking up at the old man.

"Albus Dumbledore, Harry." Harry wondered how his godfather knew such an odd-looking person. For all that he appeared to be ancient, he moved like a twenty-year-old, and now Harry noticed that he was wearing a suit of plum-coloured velvet. That alone, thought Harry, would have been enough to edge Uncle Vernon very near to a heart attack. "I was your godfather's teacher. We've kept in touch," Mr. Dumbledore explained. Although he was smiling kindly, that tint of storm-like emotion, strongly repressed, remained in him, and in fact coursed throughout the entire room.

Trying not to tremble, Harry stood up to look for the man who'd given him the glass of water. Mr. Dumbledore and Mrs. Weasley parted to allow the worn-looking man to introduce himself. "I'm Remus Lupin, Harry," he said quietly. "I'm a friend of Sirius'."

Harry didn't remember anyone introducing themself as Sirius. "Sirius?" he repeated.

"That's your godfather," Mr. Lupin explained. "His name is Sirius." He seemed to have cut himself off just before saying something else.

Harry nodded, trying to keep all the names straight. Harry's parents had known some people with quite unusual names. Perhaps some of them had changed their names, or went by nicknames. It was just another thing Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would have taken personal offense at: being called something unusual, even if it wasn't the person's fault.

But Harry liked it. He wouldn't have minded being called something more interesting than _Harry Potter_, even though the quite ordinary name _Harry_ was bad enough, according to his relatives. _Sirius Potter_ would have been cool . . . although there had been that escaped convict with the name _Sirius_, too, which must have been quite awkward for _his_ Sirius.

His Sirius.

"Where is Sirius?" he asked, feeling awkward using the first name, as if he knew him.

"He's having a slight relapse at present, I'm afraid," said Mr. Lupin, "but he very much wants to see you and will come down as soon as he's able. Tomorrow morning, we hope."

"Okay," said Harry. He almost didn't mind not meeting his godfather right away. It was like . . . . well, this had never happened to him, but it was like having a big and mysterious and wonderful-looking present waiting for him under the Christmas tree and savoring the anticipation of finding out what was inside.

He wavered a little on his feet again. Instantly, Mrs. Weasley drew out a kitchen chair for him and pressed him into it. "Have you had any dinner yet, dear?" she asked him, frowning.

"Not really," said Harry. "I got to have some crisps on the way home."

"Have you had any lunch?"

"Um, not really," admitted Harry. "We were quite busy, and the manager—"

"Have you had _breakfast_?"

"I had some grapefruit. Um."

"Right," said Mrs. Weasley, suddenly looking quite terrifying. Harry must have shrunk back, because she clasped his hand for an instant and said, "I'm not cross with you, sweetheart. Now, if you could just get him some milk to be going on with, please, Remus, I'll just whip up some soup for you, dear. Just you sit tight and don't worry about a thing."

Any protestations Harry might have had at Mrs. Weasley's cooking for him so late were quelled by the fiery determination in her eyes. "All right," he said, pulling his chair in to the empty, but very long, table. It could have seated fifteen people, easily.

"I'll leave you to Mrs. Weasley's very capable care," said Dumbledore, smiling at him again in parting. "We'll meet again soon."

Before Harry could catch Mr. Dumbledore leaving, though, Mr. Lupin had appeared again at his elbow with a glass of milk. "I'll say goodnight, too, Harry," said Mr. Lupin, "since I have an unavoidable appointment tomorrow morning, but I'm very glad to have seen you."

Trying to remember his manners, Harry said, "Thank you, Mr. Lupin. For coming to my uncle and aunt's house and everything—" He swallowed. It looked as if he'd somehow just hurt Mr. Lupin's feelings.

"Please, Harry, call me Remus," said Lupin, looking even more worn than ever.

"Oh," said Harry. "Then -- goodnight, Remus."

"Goodnight, Harry," said Lupin, and rushed out of the room.

"Here you are, sweetheart," said Mrs. Weasley, setting a huge bowl of some sort of beefy vegetable stew and about half a loaf of bread in front of Harry. "It looks like we're somehow out of butter again—those wretched boys—but you're to eat as much of the bread as you want."

"It's wonderful," said Harry, trying not to end up crying all over her shoulder again. "Thanks—thank you so much, Mrs. Weasley."

"It's nothing at all," she said, pressing a spoon into his hand. "This is your house now, you know. Will you be all right for a few minutes? I've got a few things—"

"Of course," said Harry, and Mrs. Weasley hurried out. As soon as she was gone, Harry gulped the milk down in one go and set into the bread and stew. Perhaps it was just that he was so hungry, but even the bread here seemed to taste of more than Aunt Petunia's bread. It was obviously home-baked, actually, but even so—everything here, the people, the house, the names were more . . . vibrant. More _real_.

As he chewed, he looked around the kitchen. It really was like a kitchen out of a BBC adaptation. It was practically _medieval_.Harry couldn't spot a toaster, or a blender, or even a refrigerator or a phone. Nothing electrical at all. Perhaps it was one of those kitchens that hid the appliances behind fake cupboard doors and that kind of thing.

Harry heard the kitchen door swing open. He turned, but couldn't figure out who had come through it until he heard the gentle padding of feet around the corner of the table. An enormous black dog had sat down just by his ankle and was staring up at him with intelligent brown eyes. Its tail swished back and forth across the tiles.

"Well, hello," said Harry, leaning over. Its tail wagged even more rapidly. Feeling quite touched by the dog's immediate trust in him (didn't dogs usually bark at strangers in their houses? Of course, Harry hadn't been in the houses of many people with dogs, except Aunt Marge's), Harry tried petting the dog on its head. As he did, he became vaguely aware of raised voices from behind the kitchen door.

"I don't ever want to catch you with one of those again! And you can tell Fred and George that I know you got it from them, and if I ever see a _single one_—" That was Mrs. Weasley, sounding as intimidating as she'd looked back in the kitchen. Harry couldn't make out the rest of what she was saying.

"Yeah, but, Mum —"

"I'm warning you, Ginny Weasley!"

"All right, Mum: I'm _sorry_." Ginny Weasley didn't sound very sorry at all.

"All right," said Mrs. Weasley. "You can come down now and have some dinner. I made Harry some stew, and the pot's on the stove, so you can help yourself. But _don't_—"

"I _know_, Mum."

There was a sigh, and then Ginny was stomping toward the door. It swished open.

"Hello, Harry," said Ginny, who had stopped dead in the doorway as soon as she'd caught sight of him. She seemed about Harry's age. Like her mother, she had flaming red hair, but hers was straight and pulled back into a ponytail, except for a few fine wisps around her hairline and ears.

"Hullo," said Harry, putting his spoon down carefully.

Striding over to him, she said, "I'm Ginny Weasley." Harry stood up hurriedly and introduced himself; she took his hand and shook it firmly.

Then she noticed the black dog by Harry's feet, and her eyebrows sprang up. "Oh," she said, looking amused.

"Is he yours?" asked Harry, biting his lip. "He just came in here and sat down by me."

"Oh, no. He's not mine," said Ginny, hunkering down on her heels to face the dog. "He's Sirius' dog, aren't you?" She ruffled the top of the dog's head. The dog bore it stoically.

"What's his name?"

"Snuffles," said Ginny, grinning.

"Really?" said Harry. "Oh." It was rather a huge dog for such an odd name as _Snuffles_, but Harry supposed it had, perhaps, been a very small puppy.

"He's not really supposed to be in here," said Ginny, ladling some stew into a bowl for herself. "But I won't tell on him." She plopped herself down in the seat next to Harry's.

Harry nodded. "Do you live here, too?" he ventured. Sirius had a _lot_ of friends, apparently.

"Sort of," said Ginny, flicking a bay leaf to the brim of her bowl. "Everyone comes to be with Sirius, so it's sort of a meeting place, and Sirius has tons of rooms. We Weasleys have our own house, but Professor Lupin lives here." She shrugged.

"Sort of like a commune," said Harry, trying to understand.

"Sort of," said Ginny again, noncommittally. "My brothers and I go to boarding school, though, so we really spend most of our time there."

"Do you, really?" said Harry, almost flipping over his bowl. "I've never met anyone who went to a boarding school. Is it great?"

"Oh, it's amazing," said Ginny, her brown eyes shining. Harry was transfixed. Nothing about Ginny's face itself—her mouth, her nose, her cheekbones—was particularly pretty, although nothing was particularly ugly, either. The form of her face was quite ordinary. But her skin was absolutely flawless, except for its freckles like cocoa powder on the foam of a cappuccino, and her hair was as clean and free-flowing as wind.

Everything about her was completely . . . natural. Nothing was affected. Nothing was fake. She sat in her chair, one leg curled up beneath her, in only a T-shirt and jeans and holey socks; no makeup, no jewelry, nothing extra at all, and looked as comfortable as if she'd been there all her life. Ginny was herself like earth was earth, inherently itself and nothing else, wholesome and clean and fresh and—Harry almost wanted to say _pure_, but the word seemed somehow cheap.

"What's it like?" asked Harry.

"It's in Scotland," Ginny began. "It's not terribly big, so we're all very close. That is, we're divided into four houses, so there's some rivalry, but we all know one another. Professor Lupin teaches there."

"Wow," said Harry.

"There's a huge lake, and a forest by the grounds," Ginny described, gesturing to indicate the hugeness of the lake, her stew forgotten. "We're not allowed in the forest, but some people go in anyway." She smiled. "And it's actually in an old castle, so there's lots of towers. And dungeons. And ghosts."

"Really?" said Harry. Was this girl having him on? He didn't want to seem stupid. He really didn't want her to end up laughing at him.

"No, really," said Ginny with ardent seriousness.

Feeling a little reckless, Harry decided to trust her. "Have you ever seen one of the ghosts?" he ventured.

"Oh, yes," said Ginny, chewing on a piece of beef. "Have you? Ever seen a ghost, I mean."

"No," admitted Harry. "I've never really seen anything like that, except—" He had been about to mention the dreams he'd had when he was little, about a flying motorcycle and things like that, but instead said, "one time when we were at the zoo and I thought a snake talked to me. But, obviously, it didn't." His cheeks burned. Why had he said that?

"Maybe it did," Ginny assured him, turning in her chair to face him.

"Like a _magical_ snake?" said Harry.

"Why not?" said Ginny. She leaned forward and, resting her palm flat on the table just by his elbow, whispered, "My school is a school for witches."

He had felt her breath on his cheek.

Automatically, he laughed. "Like the Worst Witch? All right, you had me there for a while." He felt sick.

"It's real," said Ginny, still leaning toward him. "I'll show you." She reached down into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out—well, it was a wand. It was clearly supposed to be a wand. The odd thing about it was that it didn't have any sparkles or extra carvings or anything on it to show that it was a wand. It was merely a slim, long piece of wood. "Don't tell my mum."

"I won't," said Harry, finding himself leaning forward, too, just to hear her.

"All right," said Ginny. She held the wand so that its tip was positioned exactly halfway between them. "_Lumos_."

The wand glowed, humming with creamy light. Without thinking, Harry moved his hand toward it, letting the light filter through his fingers. It wasn't warm in the slightest. Light without heat.

It was unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. Although Ginny might have been able to fake the effect somehow, the sensation of the light on his fingers felt . . . well, magical. It was impossible to describe, but it wasn't the pinch of Dudley's sly fingers, or the itch of a scab, or the brush of Aunt Petunia's silk dress as he brought it back from the dry cleaners', or any other sensation he'd ever experienced.

"It's magic," said Harry, turning his fingers in the light.

"Yes, it is," said Ginny.

But wasn't this just something else he'd always dreamed of? Magic. All those dreams when he was little: the flying motorcycle, the fluttering golden ball, the flash of green light. That time when he'd jumped up onto the school roof . . . but that had all ended before he'd gone to high school.

The sick feeling in his stomach got twistier. Perhaps Uncle Vernon was right about him. Perhaps there was really something wrong with his mind.

But . . . this light felt more real than all the illumination of all the John Lewis lamps in Aunt Petunia's house, all the streetlights on Privet Drive, all the flickering microwave clock numbers and TV screens in the world . . .

"How do you make it go out?" asked Harry.

"_Nox_," said Ginny, and the light was gone.

"Can you—" Harry began, but before he could finish, they both heard Mrs. Weasley's steps rushing toward the kitchen door. Ginny was wearing short sleeves, so hiding her wand up a sleeve wasn't an option. She gripped his elbow, pressing the length of the wand along the inside of her arm and the outside of his, and covered his hand on the table with her other hand, so that they were locked facing one another.

The door swung open.

"Sirius is a really nice person, I promise, Harry," Ginny reassured him. "You'll love living here."

"You think so?" said Harry, trying to play his part.

"Definitely," said Ginny, smiling at him.

"Haven't you two finished your dinners yet?" said Mrs. Weasley suspiciously.

"I'm full," said Ginny promptly.

"I'm almost done," said Harry.

"Off to bed with you, then," Mrs. Weasley shooed her daughter. While Mrs. Weasley was occupied with clearing away her daughter's bowl and spoon, Ginny stood up and casually pressed her arm to her side, allowing (Harry thought) the wand to slip back into her pocket.

"Night, Harry," said Ginny.

"Night," said Harry.

Her ponytail bobbed around the door, and then she was gone. Remembering himself, Harry began gulping down the last of the stew from his bowl.

"Things are a little hectic around here," said Mrs. Weasley unnecessarily, "but don't think we're not very glad to have you. We just didn't expect to have you quite so soon, so we didn't have your bed ready yet. But we've made a bed for you in the dining room, just for tonight. You'll have your own proper room tomorrow. Are you done, dear?" Harry had emptied his bowl.

"Yes, Mrs. Weasley. Thank you," he added again.

"I'm sure Sirius can't wait to see you tomorrow," Mrs. Weasley reassured him, whisking away his dishes. Realizing that Snuffles was no longer by his feet, Harry snuck a look under the table. Indeed, the dog was there, lying very flat with its nose on its paws, as if by doing so it could become invisible.

"I'll just show you where the bathroom is," said Mrs. Weasley. "I've put out a new toothbrush for you, since I don't think Remus brought yours." His godfather's house, Harry noticed as Mrs. Weasley led him through its corridor and up its stairs, was everywhere much like its kitchen: very large, dark, ancient, and devoid of any concessions to the current century, such as electrical outlets. He also noticed that every door he passed was closed, but perhaps such a large old house had some rooms closed off for preservation. Or perhaps people lived in them. Mrs. Weasley _had_ told him to be as quiet as possible in the hallway. Privately, Harry thought that his uncle's assessment of Mr. Dumbledore as a hippie might not be so far off (although Harry, unlike Uncle Vernon, didn't consider that a bad thing).

Then Harry realized that, if Ginny was a witch, it was entirely possible that Mrs. Weasley was one, too. In fact, Mr. Dumbledore had been _exactly_ what he would have pictured if he'd been told to imagine a wizard. Harry gasped.

"Are you all right, dear?"

"Dust," choked Harry.

As Harry was brushing his teeth in the bathroom, which looked as though it had been built during Queen Victoria's reign, he pondered the idea that Ginny might not be the only witch in the house.

He crept back from the bathroom and found that Mrs. Weasley had been serious when she'd said they'd made a bed for him in the dining room. There was, indeed, a double bed in the corner of the very long room. There was no sign of a dining table, although Harry did spot a chandelier with stumps of candles in it.

Mrs. Weasley still looked worried as she left Harry there. Harry felt she had wanted to tuck him in. He knew he was more than a little too old for that, but he still wasn't sure he was completely glad she hadn't. He'd never, ever been tucked in—not that he could remember.

His eyes nearly closing by themselves, Harry put on the pajamas she'd left him (which, appearing to date only from around 1960, were practically brand new by this house's standards) and slipped into bed, wondering whether the bed had actually been created by magic.

If Ginny went to a school for witches, and Mr. Lupin taught there, then he must be magic. And hadn't Mr. Dumbledore said that Sirius had once been _his_ student? Perhaps . . .

If Ginny was magical, and Mr. Lupin was magical, and Sirius was Mr. Lupin's friend and lived in a house with cold milk but no fridge, then Sirius might be magic, too.

Harry sat up in bed.

And if Sirius was so close to his parents that they'd named him as Harry's godfather, then . . .

Harry's parents might have been a witch and wizard.

And if Harry's parents were a witch and wizard, then . . .

Harry wouldn't let himself think it, not even to imagine it, because to imagine something was to wish it, which was to want it.

And Harry couldn't possibly want more than this.

* * *

**Author's note:**

1. Thanks to those who reviewed. It's nice to hear from people.

2. However, I'm afraid I won't always be updating this quickly. It's just that I had a large chunk of the story written before I posted anything. I'm aiming for once per week.

* * *


	3. Two Mornings

There was shouting outside Harry's door.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, _JUST POPPED AWAY FOR A SECOND_, MUNDUNGUS?" This was the voice of a man Harry didn't think he'd met.

"Well, it was hardly any time at all—" Mundungus, as Harry assumed the speaker to be, sounded both conciliatory and terrified. "I had no idea anything had--"

"Shh, Sirius!" Harry sat bolt upright. "Harry's sleeping just in there." That sounded like Mr. Lupin—but Ginny had called him Professor Lupin, hadn't she?

"Mundungus, you'd better come with me. We've got to sort out exactly when you—" began a deep, authoritative voice.

"Completely failed in his duty to all—" Sirius interjected.

"Sirius!"

"Practically abetted—"

"It was hardly any time at all, Sirius!" whined Mundungus. "I'm not getting paid for this, you know—"

"Merlin as my witness, Mundungus," threatened Sirius. Harry's heart thumped. _Merlin_. Unless this was some cool slang he hadn't heard of, he was almost certain he'd never heard anyone invoke Merlin in a threat before.

"Please, Sirius."

"Mundungus, come with me," instructed the bass voice again. "Now, what day was this?"

And that seemed to be it. Harry couldn't piece together exactly why Sirius had been so angry, but the Mundungus person seemed to have done something very wrong. Harry got the impression that Mr. Lupin would have been quite happy for Sirius to roar his lungs out at Mundungus all day, had Harry not been sleeping in the next room.

But they hadn't wanted to wake Harry up. Harry's toes felt pleasantly warm under the covers.

Harry swung his legs out of bed, tucked the sheets back in some semblance of neatness, and poked around the room until it wasn't entirely obvious that Sirius had woken him up, at which point he wandered down the hall to the kitchen and knocked on the door.

Mr. Lupin opened it. "Harry," he said, and smiled.

Everyone else was dressed. "Have I slept in?" said Harry nervously.

"You were up so late last night, we thought we'd let you," said Mr. Lupin. "Would you like some tea?"

"Yes, please," said Harry, taking a seat at the table and trying not to stare at all the other people in the room. There was a red-haired man who Harry assumed must be a relation of Mrs. Weasley's; a young woman with pixie-like pink hair (although, Harry thought, the way things were going, she might actually be a pixie); a black-haired young woman with pale skin and rosy cheeks, like Snow White; and a tall, dark-haired man in a dressing gown brooding over an empty cup of tea. Harry's mouth went dry; he felt certain this was Sirius, because he looked almost haunted—surely a mark of having been so ill.

As soon as he had taken them all in, though, the two women and the red-haired man got up and made their excuses to leave ("Oh, I forgot to say, nice haircut," the pixie told the dark-haired man as she left. "Much less, you know, urrgh—" she grimaced and bugged her eyes out, apparently imitating a ghastly ill person). Harry wondered again whether all of them actually lived in Sirius' house. It certainly seemed as though anyone was welcome to stop in whenever they felt like it—exactly the opposite of Aunt Petunia's house.

A late-morning beam of sunshine was stretching across the table, lighting on the ends of Sirius' hair and some abandoned breakfast dishes. Thinking of Ginny's _lumos_, Harry smiled.

"Did you sleep well?" asked Mr. Lupin, depositing Harry's tea in front of him.

"Yes. Thanks," said Harry, making a vow to himself that he wouldn't allow Mr. Lupin to get any more beverages for him. Weirdly enough, Mr. Lupin had also managed to make Harry's tea exactly the way Harry liked it. Perhaps that was magic, too.

"By the way, Harry," said Mr. Lupin, taking his own seat at the table, "this is your godfather, Sirius."

"Hello, Harry," said Sirius, managing a smile.

"Hi," said Harry. "Um . . . are you feeling better?"

"A little," said Sirius. "How are you, Harry?"

"I'm great, really," said Harry honestly. "I mean—I really like your house."

Mr. Lupin laughed. "Isn't it—?" Harry asked quickly.

"No, it's my house, or rather, it was my parents' house," explained Sirius. "It's just that I've been shut up in it so long, I get tired of it."

Harry nodded. He could tell that Sirius was trying to be cheerful for him, and—it wasn't that he wanted Sirius to be ill, but nobody had ever done that for him before, and felt a surge of gratitude toward this man who hardly knew him but would try to be cheerful just to make Harry comfortable.

"Harry, there are some things you should know," said Mr. Lupin in a formal but reasonable tone (much like a teacher, Harry thought).

"I'm a wizard," said Sirius simply, watching for Harry's response.

Mr. Lupin appeared to choke for a second, but nodded to Harry in confirmation.

Harry couldn't stop himself from beaming. "Really?"

"You believe me?" said Sirius, surprised. Turning to Lupin, he quipped, "Well, that was easy." For the first time, Harry saw a real smile widen over his godfather's face.

Mr. Lupin, however, was staring at Harry. "You believe that Sirius is . . . a real wizard?"

"I dunno," said Harry, abashed. "Yesterday, I wouldn't have believed I had another guardian who was going to take me away from the Dursleys, so . . . I guess today I'll believe anything." He swallowed. "You can do magic, then?"

"Oh, yes," said Sirius wickedly. "What would you like to see?"

"Um . . ." said Harry, feeling he was starting life with his new guardian on the wrong foot by lying. "Anything but the _lumos_ one, I saw that one yesterday." He blushed.

Mr. Lupin's mouth dropped open, and Sirius leaned back in his chair and laughed until Harry thought the chair would fall over. "He's definitely James' son, Remus," he said at last, once he had got his breath back. "So, who did you see doing it?"

"I don't want the person to get in trouble," said Harry, swallowing.

"Oh, so it was on purpose!"

"I bet you ten Galleons it was a Weasley, Sirius," said Mr. Lupin with unusual levity.

"I won't take that bet, Remus, because I was about to say the same thing. Go on, Harry. I promise the person won't get in trouble," he said seriously.

"It was Ginny," said Harry, unable to suppress a smile.

Sirius laughed again. "Well, she's made my job easier."

"So you know about wizards and witches?" Lupin asked Harry, getting back to the point.

"Sort of," said Harry, recalling their discussion. "Ginny said she was a witch at a school for witches, and I sort of . . . extrapolated the rest."

Lupin shook his head in astonishment.

"Well, Harry," said Sirius, "since we're being honest with one another, I also have a confession to make. I wasn't supposed to come downstairs last night, but . . . actually, I did."

"Oh, no, Sirius," said Lupin, but it was too late. Sirius had stood up from the table and, with a pop, transformed into the huge black dog Harry had met last night.

Harry choked in astonishment, spilling his tea. "Do you . . . feel better as a dog?"

"Yeah, I do," said Sirius, changing back. "Dogs are just happy most of the time, really. Anyway, no harm was done." He looked at Lupin.

"All right," said Lupin. "I won't tell Albus or Molly or anyone else. Although I wish you'd learn a little moderation, Sirius."

As Sirius didn't say anything to this, Harry busied himself searching for a rag with which to mop up his tea.

"Oh, the tea?" realised Lupin, and drew out a long wand from his pocket. Harry watched avidly as the tea vanished from the table.

"I'll get another cup," he said hurriedly, reaching for the teapot before Lupin did it for him again. "Sirius? Um, Remus?"

"No, thanks, Harry," said Sirius. Lupin declined with a tilt of the head

As Harry poured his tea, he began, "I've also been wondering something else."

"Yes?" said Sirius.

"I've been wondering whether—well, you and—Remus—are both wizards, and I wondered—about my parents."

"Lily and James," said Lupin, almost as if the words were a spell.

"Yes, they were magic," said Sirius intensely.

Harry managed not to spill this cup of tea, and instead looked at it for a few seconds. "And . . . me?" he asked it. "I'm . . . not."

"Well . . ." began Lupin.

"Of course you are," said Sirius, giving Lupin what was almost a dirty look. "Definitely. You are a wizard, Harry. We just have to find your magic under what they did to you."

"Your aunt and uncle, obviously, aren't magical," added Lupin.

"How do we . . . do that? Find if I have magic?" Harry was trying to drink his tea normally, as if he hadn't just been told he might be able to do magic. It was scalding his tongue every time, and he didn't even care. He was just glad Sirius had responded so well to all his questions. It was as though all those years of _don't ask questions_ about his parents' death had resulted in a vast reservoir of unused mental question marks, which were now spilling out. "It's just . . . I've never done any before." But he had talked to that snake back on Dudley's birthday, hadn't he?

Had he? He'd been so young at the time, and the memory was faint.

And . . . he remembered some sort of horrible row over something ridiculous like his hair growing back too quickly, although it had been a long time ago, and . . . hadn't he once been punished for jumping on a roof? But that wasn't magic, it was jumping. And of course the Dursleys would have punished him because his hair had grown too fast. They'd have punished him because it was raining or because the electricity had gone out.

Surely, if he was magic, he would have _known_. How could you not know? It was impossible. And, not counting when he was a little kid—and maybe he'd imagined all the stuff that had happened back then—he'd been as boring as could be.

"You do have magic," said Lupin, as if to make up for his hesitation on the point before.

"First thing, though, you need a wand," Sirius realized. "It's no good using other people's."

Harry nodded, clenching his fists under the table. He didn't, he really didn't want to disappoint them when they found out he wasn't magical after all. Could a magical person be a guardian for a non-magical person?

"I'll contact Albus right away," said Lupin, getting up. "I suppose I should explain: Harry, in the wizarding world, we use owls to carry our letters," he told Harry. "I'll go send Albus an owl about getting you a wand."

"The wizarding world?" repeated Harry, after Lupin had left.

"Oh, Harry," said Sirius in realization. "We didn't explain it, did we? Witches and wizards don't just exist and have their own school and so on. We have our own world. Not a planet," he added, seeing Harry's face, "but another Britain above and behind and _within_ the normal Britain. And the same for everywhere else in the world. We have our own shops; we have our own World Cup; we have our own Ministry. There's normal London, and then there's wizard London, for example. Muggles—that's what we call non-magic people—can't see it. They can't see any wizard stuff. It's all enchanted that way."

Harry wasn't entirely sure he understood all this, but he did understand one part. "So I've never seen this. . . wizard stuff, since I'm not a wizard?"

"You _are_ a wizard," Sirius insisted.

Harry felt heartened by Sirius' faith in him, even if it was misplaced.

Sirius sighed. "I should get dressed, shouldn't I? Sometimes it's hard to see the point, when you can't go outside."

Harry realized that he, too, was still wearing his pajamas, and it was almost lunchtime. "Um . . . Sirius?" he said, just as his godfather was about to leave the room.

"Yes, Harry?" Sirius looked concerned.

"So . . . my mum and dad went to wizard school? And you did?"

"Yeah, we did," said Sirius, after a moment.

Since Sirius hadn't actually tried to change the subject, Harry decided to be brave and press on. "Was it different schools, or . . . all the same school? Is that how you met? I mean, I remember Mr. Dumbledore saying you were an old pupil of his, so I wondered . . ."

"It was all the same school," said Sirius, with a bittersweet smile. "There aren't that many wizards in any population, so Britain has only one wizarding school. We all went there. Hogwarts, it's called."

"Hogwarts," repeated Harry, both surprised at the name and struck by the image of his parents and this man at school together.

"You know, I've got some old photo albums upstairs," said Sirius gently. "Lots of pictures of your mum and dad. We could have a look at them. I could tell you who all the people are."

Harry shot up from his chair. "Can we?" he said. Then, realizing he sounded a little too eager, he began fussing with clearing away his teacup.

"Don't worry about that," said Sirius, waving his hand. "Come on, follow me."

Once they were upstairs, Harry perched on Sirius' bed while his godfather dug out albums from a box in his wardrobe. Sirius' room certainly was sparse, considering he'd presumably been forced to stay in it by his illness for the last fourteen years.

At last, Harry's godfather, with a few thick leather-bound albums under his arm, indicated that Harry should shuffle back on the bed so that his back was against the wall. Sirius sat next to him and did the same, and then rested the spine of the first album on the stripe of bedspread between them.

"This is me in first year," began Sirius, pointing to the first photo.

Harry was so distracted by the other figure in the photo, he barely noticed that the entire picture was moving. "Is that _Remus_?" he said, pointing to the young dirty blond boy next to Sirius. Both of them were hardly recognizable. These boys weren't just younger; they glowed with . . . Harry wanted to call it happiness, but it was more than that. It was nearly carefree; it was naïve. With a shock, Harry recognized something that he himself had lost a long time ago. It was the belief that, essentially, the world was good; that things would turn out all right; that they were young and invulnerable and capable of anything.

Although, Harry corrected himself, Remus' eyes had a hint—just a hint—of the deep shadows now carved underneath them.

"Yeah, we were friends almost right away," said Sirius, his finger touching his past self's face. Noticing Harry's face, he explained, "So was your dad, of course. He was the one taking the picture." He flipped to the next page, where Sirius was standing with someone who looked—almost exactly like Harry! They were both covered in some sort of sludgy substance and offering thumbs up to the camera.

"That's him," breathed Harry. His father winked at him, evidently proud of whatever he'd done to get the sludge all over him. "Who's that next to you?"

"That's another boy in our year," said Sirius casually. "Peter."

They went on through the album. Harry saw his father and, later, Sirius in what Sirius said were uniforms for the school sports team. Harry heard all about the four houses, and the tower in which the boys had lived. He saw the school lake, just as Ginny had described it, ruffled with wind and exhibiting what seemed to be a tentacle waving hello. He saw the castle from a distance. The small boy, Peter, appeared in quite a few of the photos, but Sirius explained that they hadn't remained in touch long out of Hogwarts. There were lots of large group photos, too, and odd shots of waving strangers.

But, often, in naming these strangers, Sirius would say something like, "They got married not long after your parents. The Longbottoms." And there would be a palpable sense of loss in the words, the feeling that the Longbottoms were now permanently restricted to the past tense.

Or, "That's my brother, Regulus."

"Does he live here, too?"

"No, he's dead now."

Harry didn't know how to ask, "Hey, Sirius, why are so many of your old friends not around any more?" But maybe it was like that for people who used magic. Perhaps it took a toll on you . . .

If it did, Harry decided, it would still be worth it, if only he could do it. _If . . _.

They were almost done with the last album when Remus leaned around Sirius' bedroom door and said, "Oh, there you are." He didn't mention that they were both still in their pajamas. "Sirius, Albus wants to talk to you about getting Harry's wand."

Sighing, as though this was a most painful drudgery, Sirius got up. "I'll be back soon," he told Harry.

"Okay," said Harry, looking over the last pictures. His father seemed to be presenting his mother with a tiny, golden ball with fluttering wings. She was laughing and reaching toward it.

* * *

"But we _promise _we won't tell Harry _anything_, Mrs. Weasley," said Hermione for the tenth time. "_Really_ we won't."

"They can't just let Harry go around not knowing who he is," protested Ron beside her, rather undermining Hermione's promise.

"We're his friends, Mum," said Fred with disturbing seriousness.

"Harry'll go mad, stuck in that place," added Ginny.

"He hasn't even got Hedwig!" George joked, feeding the white owl the end of his breakfast sausage.

Mrs. Weasley took a deep breath. Then all the dishes which were washing themselves in the sink fell down with a crash, and she spun around. Ron and the twins pre-emptively began to cower, but were confronted with something quite unlike the usual tirade. "Don't you understand?" she snapped. "Albus thought Harry was safe, thought You-Know-Who was just gathering his forces, and Harry was attacked! He could have been killed! Harry can't possibly go anywhere until we find out _what happened_ that night."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Weasley," said Hermione at once. "I just meant it might be all right if we visited him there. We miss him," she added. "And we're worried about him."

"We all are," said Mrs. Weasley, returning to magically scrubbing burnt bits off the bottom of a roasting pan. "But Albus doesn't think Harry should be overwhelmed. He says Harry's very mentally fragile right now. He says the memory charm used on Harry was very powerful and complex, and Harry needs to recover before he's exposed to any more mental strain at all."

Hermione perked up. "You mean it wasn't a normal _obliviate_?"

Mrs. Weasley sighed. "I really shouldn't be telling you this, but no. Albus isn't certain exactly what spell was used, but from what he learned from Harry while he was unconscious, it was a very advanced charm—the kind of thing your normal Death Eater just wouldn't have heard of."

"So it must have been You-Know-Who himself . . ." breathed Ron. Pigwidgeon zipped around Hedwig a few times in his excitement; ignoring him, Hedwig remained dignifiedly still.

"Or maybe one of the Death Eaters specializes in Memory Charms," said George.

"I've got it!" shouted Fred, standing up suddenly.

"What?" said Mrs. Weasley quickly.

"It was _Lockhart_," the twins said simultaneously. They collapsed over one another in laughter.

"No, but seriously, we could look up all the Death Eaters and see if any of them has particular expertise with Memory Charms," said Hermione, getting that inspired look that predicted hours and hours of research.

"We could look at all the Death Eater activity on record," said Ginny slowly, "and see if anything involved really advanced Memory Charms, then look up to see which Death Eater did it."

"Or if any suspected Death Eater had ever been an Obliviator," said Fred.

"We'll get Kingsley to get us the Ministry lists of past employees for that," said George.

"And if we knew who did it," said Ron, "we could find them and make them reverse it."

Mrs. Weasley flicked the drinking glasses back into their cupboard thoughtfully. "All right," she said at last. "You're not to contact Harry or tell him _anything _he doesn't know. And if you learn _anything_, you are to tell me or another member of the Order at _once_, am I completely clear?"

"Yes, Mum," they chorused, glancing at one another.

"You are NOT to enter into ANY sort of danger," Mrs. Weasley reiterated, leaning over the table and glowering.

"All right, Mum," said Ron.

"You're really going to let us do it?" said George, earning a kick from Ginny under the table.

Suddenly, Mrs. Weasley looked very tired. "The Wizarding World is depending on Harry, whether he knows it or not," she said. "And it looks as though Voldemort is returning to power more quickly than . . ." She turned to Hermione, Ron, and Ginny. "I'll talk to Albus about getting you access to the Hogwarts library for your research over the summer, and there's hardly a safer place than Hogwarts," she said. "And you'll stay here," she told the twins. "It'll be Kingsley or Tonks doing the dangerous part, getting you the Ministry information." Her eyes flashed. "And since I know you'll be getting into mischief, at least I'll be better off knowing what mischief you're getting into."

"Thanks, Mum," said Ron quietly.

As they were walking up the stairs, Ron asked Hermione, "You don't think the owls will be able to deliver to Harry yet, do you?"

"Ron!" said Hermione, scandalized. "Your mum _just_ explained why we can't tell Harry about his memories yet!"

"I just thought Harry should have Hedwig back," scowled Ron.

"Oh," said Hermione. "I'm not completely certain, then."

"You don't know?" said Ron, lifting an eyebrow.

Hermione pursed her lips. "Post owls are very complicated magical creatures, and they're clever. Very clever. They didn't deliver to Harry because he'd just been put under a serious Memory Charm: he had no idea the wizarding world existed, let alone post owls, and they're never supposed to reveal the existence of magic to those who aren't aware of it. That's got to be one of their primary rules, considering they fly all over the world, over Muggle territory. Anyway, if they had tried, Harry might've just closed the window to keep them out and then called Animal Control." She sighed. "There's more than one reason I got my Hogwarts letter via the Royal Mail."

"So, I guess they'll deliver to Harry again when they reckon he'll understand what they are," concluded Ron.

"But we don't know whether Sirius' broken the news to Harry yet," said Hermione. "He was supposed to this morning, wasn't he?"

"Yeah," said Ron glumly. "Bit stupid trying to pretend magic doesn't exist in a giant magic house filled with talking portraits and curtains that try to kill you and Hippogriffs in the attic."

Hermione being Hermione, she wanted to dive into the research straight away, and so she and Ron collected every book in the house that might be relevant (including the family's bedraggled seventh year Charms texts and Mr. Weasley's Ministry-issued Obliviation guide) and began to pore over them immediately—at least, Hermione did. Ron spent the time on his stomach on the floor, alternately flipping through whatever Hermione wasn't looking at and heading back to the kitchen to get cups of tea and bicker with the twins.

At eleven o'clock a.m., Hedwig hurtled into the living room, made what seemed almost to be a bow to Ron and Hermione in mid-air, then shot out of the window with unusual excitement.

They looked at one another, eyes bright. "There's your answer," said Hermione, both smiling and blinking away tears. "He knows about magic again."

"We'll do this bloody research and get Harry back properly," Ron told her. "Completely. Horrible as it's going to be," he added with a groan.

* * *

**Author's note: **

1. In response to a question, we'll eventually learn how Harry lost his memories. Everything will be explained eventually : )

2. Again, I don't plan to update this frequently all the time. I'm tidying up stuff already written right now.

3. It is nice to get reviews.


	4. Two Visits From Dumbledore

Harry peeked out through the rather moldy-seeming curtains in his new room. There was a slight blush in the night sky behind the rooftops to the east, but, considering this was summer, that could mean it was as early as . . . what, five o'clock?

Harry groaned and massaged his temples again. The horrible headache was probably due to the weird hours he'd been keeping: yesterday, he'd woken up practically at lunchtime, and then he'd fallen asleep just after dinner! He'd just felt so tired, even though he really had been interested in everything Sirius and Lupin had been telling him about the workings of the Muggle world. Perhaps they could go see Diagon Alley today. If he could just get rid of this. . .

"Headache?" the mirror asked him brusquely, rather in the manner of (Harry thought) an old-fashioned upper-crust governess.

Harry started. "Um, yes?" he said, trying not to stare at the mirror.

"Shame," said the mirror haughtily and unhelpfully.

The rest of the room appeared to be quite normal, albeit far more opulent-looking and spacious than anything Harry had ever inhabited before. It contained an old brass bed; what looked like mahogany dressers and an intimidating wardrobe with silver handles in the shape of something Harry couldn't identify; large and newly-scrubbed-looking sash windows; and a rag rug on the floorboards, quite out of character with the rest of the room, but nice and soft. Except the rug, the entire room exuded casual wealth. It occurred to Harry that, if this big, expensive-looking place in London was Sirius', Sirius might be quite wealthy. Then he told himself off for the thought. Sirius was his guardian, and it didn't matter how much money Sirius had, as long as it was enough so that Harry wasn't a burden.

The room even had its own bathroom attached; Harry suspected, somehow (perhaps from the room's lack of personal touches) that it had been a guest room. The taps of the bath (no shower here) seemed to be in the shapes of snakes of some sort, which was imaginative, although odd. Harry sank uneasily into the vast porcelain tub.

He thought he'd been having nightmares, although that might just have been the headache. His pajamas had been stuck to his back with sweat, though.

Flashes of green light . . . hadn't he dreamed them when he was very small?

And then he'd dreamed of his parents. Not surprising, really, considering he'd spent all afternoon hearing about them from Sirius. Now, for the first time, he could really picture their faces.

They were a witch and wizard, too.

The soap clunked to the bottom of the tub and Harry rescued it quickly, not wanting to wake anyone else up. Sirius in particular was definitely a night owl.

Speaking of owls, what about that white owl that had arrived and taken such a liking to him? Sirius swore this wasn't a repeat of the black dog incident, but . . . well, perhaps Harry would have to learn to ascribe all these weird things to magic.

Magic . . .

Harry's mum and dad had been magic.

So why had they died?

Harry had already seen Sirius and Lupin do magic that Harry was sure would save a person's life in a car accident—making things float, for starters. How could they have died?

As a matter of fact, how could so many of their friends have died? And "We Don't Talk To Him Any More" Peter. It all seemed a bit . . . suspicious, to be honest. And Sirius certainly didn't seem keen to go into detail about any of the deaths, either. Not even Harry's parents'.

And not even Sirius' own illness.

Harry leaned his head back on the tub, hard as the porcelain was. Harry didn't want to think that Sirius was lying to him. Sirius was . . . well, he would have been practically just what Harry would have asked for if told he could have a guardian who'd sweep him away from the Dursleys. Sirius was cool, you couldn't deny it. Sirius had infinite patience with Harry's questions. Sirius _cared_ about Harry, and it wasn't forced at all.

But, Harry realized, he had begun to trust these strangers so quickly that, now, he was surprised with himself. They'd practically kidnapped him from the Dursleys', from one point of view. Their explanation of why they'd suddenly come for him after never even contacting him before seemed a little bit . . . lacking.

Harry didn't want not to love them, even though he felt foolish at the same time.

Sirius must have a good reason for not telling Harry the complete truth about his illness and Harry's parents and all their friends. After all, he had lied to Harry in concealing his magic when Harry had just arrived, but as soon as Harry had recovered he'd told him.

And Sirius did have pictures of his mum and dad, the first pictures Harry had ever seen of them. He didn't know whether you could make magic lie, but from the pictures of his dad's entire school career and afterwards, even including his wedding, it was obvious that James had held Sirius as his dearest friend. It would have been impossible to fake what he'd seen in those pictures.

It turned out that Lupin had piled Harry's things into what appeared to be an old-fashioned school trunk with the initials R.A.B. on it. Digging through it after his bath, Harry realized how few possessions he actually had. The nearly-empty trunk seemed out of place in the lavish room, although it, too, seemed to hail from before the 20th century.

Once he was dressed and had finished his abortive attempts to flatten his hair, he sat back on his bed, at a loss. He couldn't hear anyone else awake, and didn't see the point in wandering around the house alone.

There were bookshelves in the corner, although they were mostly empty.

Harry looked through the books that were there. Unsurprisingly, they were all ancient. _Charms for Flower-Arranging: A Genteel Pastime_. Avid as Harry was to learn magic, that one didn't thrill him. _A Goblin's Guide to Profiting from Investments_. Goblins? In any case, since he wasn't very interested in investments, either, Harry moved on. _Florizel Flourish's Self-Updating Complete Encyclopedia_. This tome was at least as large as Sirius when he was a dog. Harry managed to move it to the bed and opened it to a random page.

Apparently, a **Quaffle** was a ball used in **Quidditch**, which was the game his father and Sirius had played, wasn't it? The encyclopedia confirmed it: "**Quidditch** is a team game played on broomsticks with seven players to a team and four balls in play. It was invented in . . ."

Harry settled into a more comfortable position, with his pillow behind his back. This could be really useful in helping him not look like an idiot when people talked about magic. He flipped to a different page and read about **Ghouls**, **Ghosts** and **Giants** (the book's verdict: all scary). He avidly read the too-brief lines on **Hogwarts** several times, only noting with a jolt the last time that Mr. Dumbledore, who had first explained his situation to him, was the school's headmaster! Neither Harry's primary school nor his secondary school had had a headmaster with hair that could be tucked into his or her belt. He turned to the entries for **Gryffindor**, **Hufflepuff**, **Ravenclaw** and **Slytherin**. The dictionary at least said that Slytherins were primarily ambitious, which made more sense than Sirius' explanation that they were "all bastards."

Then, as he idly looked over the pages from **Slytherin** onward, an entry caught his eye.

"**Squibs** are offspring of magical parents who possess no magical ability," said the book. "Luckily, Squibs occur very rarely, but, when they do, they often face prejudice and exclusion from the magical community, not to mention the difficulty resulting from living in the magical world without being able to perform magic. In the past, Squibs were often treated as a family's shameful secret. More recently, Squibs are received with greater tolerance, but most Squibs still choose to leave the Wizarding World and live as Muggles, often sharing little or no contact with their magical relatives."

He read the entry carefully a second time.

Harry closed the book and lifted it back onto the shelf, then curled up back under the covers, his head aching, until Sirius knocked on his door at ten o'clock.

"You're awake?" said Sirius, coming in. "I thought you'd come down for breakfast."

"Actually, I woke up ages ago," admitted Harry. "I had a headache." He rubbed his scar. "But it's all right now," he added.

"Well, tell me if you get another, and I'll get you some headache potion," said Sirius. He sat on the end of Harry's bed. "Do you just want to sleep in today? We're still arranging for you to get your wand, but it should be soon."

"What about . . . going to Diagon Alley?" Harry suggested, sitting up in bed.

He saw at once that this had been the wrong thing to say. "I'm afraid I'm not really up to strolling around Diagon Alley, Harry," apologized Sirius, looking guilty.

"Oh," said Harry, his stomach knotting. "Okay. I mean, I understand. Um . . . breakfast sounds great, then."

"We've got pancakes today," Sirius told him, sounding more cheerful. "And Albus Dumbledore is here again, too. You remember him?"

Harry nodded as they began to take the stairs down. "Isn't he the Headmaster of Hogwarts?"

"That's right." Sirius sounded pleased.

"So it might have been you-know-who?" A young woman's voice carried down the hall. If Harry remembered rightly, it belonged to the pink-haired woman who had complimented Sirius on his haircut.

"I have _no idea_," a man was snapping behind the kitchen door. "There's simply no information. All I know is that Bellatrix, Malfoy and Pettigrew were—"

They entered the kitchen to the smell of lemon and sugar. Lupin flipped a thin, lace-edged pancake into the air and caught it in its way down. "Good morning," he called over his shoulder to them.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Potter, Sirius," said Dumbledore, nodding to them. He was sitting at the table and squeezing lemon over a freshly folded and sugar-dusted pancake. "How are you, Harry?"

"Fine," said Harry, although it was a funny way for Dumbledore to ask how he was adapting to his new home.

A hook-nosed man with greasy hair and an even filthier glare took in Harry and Sirius, scowled, and without a hello or goodbye stepped into green flames in the fireplace and vanished.

"Don't mind Severus," Dumbledore assured Harry. "Have a seat."

Harry was no less bemused by Severus' odd appearance and mood than by hearing the phrase "You-Know-Who" uttered by an adult woman. Witches and wizards, he thought, with a mental shake of the head. They were all mad in one way or another.

"Harry had a headache this morning," Sirius mentioned, slicing a lemon. "Perhaps Severus can donate some of his headache potion."

"Indeed," nodded Dumbledore, examining Harry yet again with that X-ray-like stare. Harry tried not to squirm.

He hadn't thought before about how not being magic meant he'd never be able to go to Hogwarts. Well, perhaps he could, one day, as the caretaker or something. He'd just like to see it: the Quidditch pitch, the lake, the towers, the Forbidden Forest, the Great Hall with its magical ceiling that showed the stars at night and the sun during the day . . . how wonderful.

But, he thought, jerking himself back to reality, he hadn't really considered what he'd do about school at all.

"At the end of the summer," said Harry, as the others leaned back in their chairs, "I'll go back to my normal school, will I?"

"Do you want to?" asked Lupin, passing him a plate of two gorgeous folded pancakes.

"This looks wonderful," he said, looking up. "Thanks."

"Benefits of being a bachelor," explained Lupin. Sirius passed him a half a lemon. "Do you want to go back to your old school?" he repeated.

"Not really," said Harry honestly. "I mean, it's quite far away from here . . . but I think I should get my GCSEs, shouldn't I?"

"Muggle OWLs," the pink-haired pixie woman, who had been glugging quietly through a tankard of coffee, told the others. "I'm Tonks, by the way." She waved.

"Um . . . hi," said Harry, his cheeks burning. The whole conversation had become very awkward.

"The question is, really, whether you want to live in the Muggle or magical world," Lupin explained in his teacher-like, logical way. "I'm afraid CSGEs won't be much good to you here."

"Well . . ." This was a crucial moment, Harry could tell. "I'd rather stay in the wizarding world," he admitted. Even if it turned out he was a Squib, he'd rather be a Squib in the magical world, with a godfather who loved him, than a shadow in the real world, with the Dursleys.

Everyone relaxed. "Then you can stay here with me, never mind your old school," said Sirius conclusively. "I'll teach you magic, as soon as you get your wand." He added, "That is, if you want to."

"Of course I do!" blurted Harry, and then dug into his pancake.

"By the way, Harry," Dumbledore began, looking at Harry over his half-moon glasses, "I came here today for a purpose related to your magical education."

Harry glanced up at Sirius, who nodded.

"In fact, Harry," said Dumbledore, "I was wondering whether you might accept my offer of some . . . magical therapy, let's call it."

"Magical therapy?"

"Someone your age might have difficulty performing spells, having been prevented from doing it before by his ignorance of magic," Dumbledore explained. "Part of Hogwarts' duties is to send letters to Muggle-born witches and wizards, informing them of the existence of magic."

"Like my mum," Harry contributed.

"Precisely." Dumbledore beamed. "They adjust to their education fairly easily, being young. However, at your age, the adjustment might be more slow."

"Like learning a language is easier when you're a little kid?"

"Precisely," said Dumbledore again. "However, I, being possessed of some not negligible magical talents myself, am able to offer you a little magical assistance in this regard."

"You should try it," said Lupin, and Sirius nodded again.

Harry nodded. "When . . .?"

"No time like the present," said Dumbledore cheerfully. "Shall we say, after breakfast?"

Harry agreed, so, after he'd finished his pancakes and tried to help clear up, he found himself sitting across the table from Dumbledore, while Sirius sat silently at the other end, reading what seemed to be a magical adventure story about someone named Heracles Harvey.

"Now, for this, Harry, all you need to do is look at me and relax. I'm just going to be introducing your mind to some magic. All right?"

"Okay." The man was the Headmaster of Hogwarts, after all, and Sirius trusted him. And Harry trusted Sirius. In a way, Sirius was the only thing his father had ever given him—a godfather. Apart from anything else, Harry had to trust his father's judgment.

This wasn't to say that Harry was completely certain that the treatment was what Dumbledore said it was, and not, for example, a treatment to turn Squibs into wizards. If the therapy had just been invented, it could explain why Sirius had suddenly contacted him now.

Nevertheless, Harry looked at Dumbledore. The old man had a terribly intense stare, and he wanted to look away, but forced himself not to.

"Tell me about this summer . . ." said Dumbledore.

And Harry, feeling a strange detachment from the memories he was retelling, began with school's ending, the hosepipe ban, and Aunt Petunia's wordless battle with the neighbours over the size of their respective camellias.

Every once in a while, he felt a blue spark dancing at the edge of his mind . . .

* * *

"Dumbledore!" said Ron in astonishment, dropping the Quaffle he'd been carrying in from the garden. "I mean, er, Professor Dumbledore." His ears turned scarlet.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Weasley," said Dumbledore, bowing.

The rest of the younger Weasleys streamed in behind him, leaving trails of muddy footprints across the lino and, in Ginny's case, removing minor twigs from her hair. Hermione brought in the rear, still absorbed in the NEWT Transfiguration text she'd found while looking for Percy's Charms text, which had turned out to be no help at all.

"Well, just let us know when you think he's ready, Albus," said Mrs. Weasley, "and we'll make up a bed for Harry."

"I shall," Dumbledore assured her.

Turning to his children and Hermione, Mr. Weasley explained, "Professor Dumbledore wants to talk with you about your plans."

"We won't do anything dangerous, Professor," Hermione began at once, earnestly. "We just can't sit around knowing that we could be helping Harry. And we really might be able to find something useful."

"My intention was not to dissuade you," Dumbledore told her gently. "I'm here merely to assist you, as your parents asked me to. In fact, I've brought you a rather large selection of relevant texts from the Hogwarts library, as well as a few volumes of my own." He waved his wand, and a battered-looking school trunk sailed in from the sitting room. Its trunk popped open, and Hermione, leaning in, saw that it was stacked with books apparently numerous rows deep, far beyond where the bottom of the trunk ought to have been.

"Thank you, sir," she said, standing back in awe.

"I admit that I perused the most relevant of these myself as soon as I had learned of Harry's accident, and found nothing," said Dumbledore humbly. "Indeed—not to be too immodest—but my ignorance of the spell rather suggests that it is not contained in any of these books. However, we are all fallible, and you may very well spot something that I, in my age, did not."

"What about records of Death Eater attacks?" asked Ginny at once. "Mum and Dad saved a lot of _Prophets_ from when they were in the first Order of the Phoenix, but the _Prophet_ doesn't always tell you everything, and neither does the Ministry."

"Ah, Miss Weasley," said Dumbledore appreciatively. "The Order's own records of known attacks are also included, although you may not find them enjoyable reading."

"I understand," said Ginny resolutely.

"We wondered if it might have been a Death Eater that used to work for the Ministry," George said.

"Do you know any Death Eaters who used to be Obliviators?" finished Fred.

"Unfortunately, I do not," said Dumbledore with a sigh. "Rather too much of an anonymous grind for the Death Eater type, I suspect. Nevertheless, again, I do not assert that none exist—only that we know of none. I think it would be not be pointless for you to look over the lists of all wizards and witches in pay of the Obliviation Office in the last, say, fifty years. You may find a name we had not realized was connected with them."

Fred and George glanced at one another, as though deciding whether to take on the job, and then both turned to Dumbledore and nodded.

"I'll bring them to you as soon as possible," Dumbledore promised. "Now, alas, other pressing business draws me, and we must say farewell for now. Thank you for permitting your children to assist us," he added, speaking to Mr. and Mrs Weasley.

Mr. Weasley nodded. Mrs Weasley took her husband's hand.

"And thank you, Mr. Weasley, Mr. Weasley, Mr. Weasley, Miss Weasley and Miss Granger," Dumbledore finished, making another of his sweeping bows. "Adieu." The adult Weasleys walked him down to the Burrow's gate.

"You wouldn't've thought he'd bring it here himself, would you?" said Ron.

"Fred, look," said George, crouching down in front of the trunk. "Look at the initials."

"It's _Dumbledore's school trunk_," boggled Fred.

They slid into chairs around the kitchen table and looked at the trunk.

"Well, I suppose we should get started," said Hermione, reaching into the trunk and drawing out _Modified Charms and their Specific Results (Vol. 3: Charms to Affect a Human Subject's Mind). _

"Better put our stuff away first," said Ron, tucking the Quaffle under his arm.

"Right," agreed Ginny, rubbing her sleeve over the muddy mark it had left on the table.

After collecting the four brooms leaning against the outside oft he house, the two youngest Weasleys stepped out into the drizzle, making their way through the damp summer air to the shed.

Inside the shed, Ron stared up at the unsanded beams supporting the roof. "What do we do if we can't fix Harry?" he asked.

Ginny propped the brooms against the wall. "You mean you and me and Hermione and all, or everyone?"

"I dunno," said Ron, shifting uncomfortably. The rain pattered on the wood outside.

* * *

**Author's note:**

1. This chapter was necessary for the story, but maybe was a little bit angsty . . . it was difficult to write. Sorry. I promise we won't stay in angst mode for long. This isn't an angst fic.

2. I know Harry's section is kind of confusing, but I think you can figure out which things being told to Harry are true and which are covering up things related to his amnesia.

3. Reviews are nice.


	5. Two Houses

Harry's palms were sweaty. He hadn't been this nervous since Dudley had broken his Playstation last March and blamed it on Harry.

Shifting into a more comfortable position in the big wingback chair, Harry leaned back and balanced Sirius' old copy of Adalbert Waffling's _Magical Theory_ on his knees. "Wand movements are an integral component of spellcasting for three reasons . . ."

Pale sky blue flames fluttered in the fireplace, bathing his legs in cool, rather than warm, air. Sirius sat across from him, trying to coax an old pocketwatch he'd found back into proper working order. The early afternoon sun sparkled from its gold casing as Sirius turned it over and over intently.

Hearing the soft clunk of Lupin gently closing the front door, he raced out onto the landing. A tiny, wizened wizard with large, creepy eyes was following his godfather's friend into the kitchen.

"I thought Remus was bringing my wand," he said to Sirius, who had followed him out of the room.

"That's Mr. Ollivander," explained Sirius. "He's the wandmaker. Come on, you'll see." And Harry hurried to follow Sirius downstairs.

In fact, sitting in Grimmauld Place's now-familiar kitchen, Mr. Ollivander was even more creepy than he had originally appeared. "Ah, Harry," said the old man, as though he knew him. Then he waved his wand, and stacks and stacks of thin boxes, like shoe-boxes sliced into three lengthways, accumulated from nowhere in piles on the table.

As this was going on, Harry's heart was beginning to thud. "What . . .?" he began, looking at Sirius and then at Lupin.

"We're going to find you a wand, Mr. Potter," said Mr. Ollivander. "Extend your right arm, please."

Harry tried to ignore a floating measuring tape measuring every dimension of his body and, especially, his right arm.

Then Ollivander handed Harry a wand. "Eleven inches, holly and dragon heartstring," he said.

"Just wave it around," advised Lupin.

Swallowing, Harry took the wand. It felt . . . lighter than he had imagined. It didn't feel magical--not like Ginny's _lumos_ had felt magical. He might as well been waving a ruler around.

Everyone was staring at him, but nothing was happening.

"Oh, well," he said, forcing a good-sported smile. "It was worth a try."

"We're not done yet!" said Mr. Ollivander. "Eleven inches, holly and unicorn tail hair." He pried the dragon heartstring wand from Harry's hand and replaced it with the unicorn one.

Taking a deep breath, Harry waved it. Nothing happened.

Mr. Ollivander, without comment, replaced it with another--and another--and another. Harry had thought he'd find out right away whether he was magic or not. That might almost have been better than the drawn-out not knowing, the tension of trying and failing over and over again. He felt sick.

After cycling through holly, beech, birch, elm, maple, yew, plane and ash, Harry finally asked, "What is supposed to happen?"

"Magic," said Mr. Ollivander unhelpfully.

"Sparks, usually," said Lupin.

"Oh," said Harry. "Well, perhaps we should . . . just give it up."

"No, no," dismissed Mr. Ollivander. "Obviously, we were starting out on the wrong tack entirely." He chuckled. "Try this. Twelve and a quarter inches, hazel, unicorn tail hair. Resilient."

Obediently, Harry took it and waved, trying yet again to recall the sensation of Ginny's _lumos, _trying to isolate the aspect of it that had marked it so clearly as magic. _Magic,_ he thought, as hard as he could._ Your parents were magic, you can be magic, you _can_ be magic. . _

_Be magic, please, be magic, let it fill your fingers, your toes, your veins, your heart . . . _

In his memory, he saw the white light, felt it streaming past his fingers, impossible, light without heat . . .

"Harry!" shouted Sirius.

"Nimue," cackled Ollivander. "I think that may have been worth the trip in itself!"

Harry opened his eyes, and then shut them again, dazzled by the aura of white light emanating from the end of his wand.

Harry sat down abruptly, still holding the wand out as if it were going to explode.

"Can you put it out, Harry?" asked Lupin at his shoulder.

The light went out, and, trembling, Harry put the wand down on the table.

"No payment, no payment," Ollivander was insisting. "We'll just go back to the shop and then—bam!" He laughed. "Mr. Lupin is going to gift me with an _obliviate_," he explained to Harry.

"Very well," said Lupin, revealing just a hint of annoyance, and the two left the room. The heap of boxes slowly pop--pop--popped back into nonexistence.

"Oh, my God," said Harry into his hands.

"Harry, you're a wizard!" reveled Sirius. He sat down next to Harry. "Do you realize you just did a proper _lumos?"_

"Yeah," managed Harry, looking at the wand on the table.

"What's the matter?" asked Sirius, leaning forward with concern.

"Nothing," said Harry, running his fingers through his hair. "I just . . . I really didn't think I was magic, you know? I really didn't think I was. I mean, I can . . ." His eyes widened. He could _do magic._

He could do magic.

"Sirius, can we . . . can we try doing something? A . . . spell, I mean."

"Yes, we can," said Sirius, looking pleased. He swished his wand in the direction of the bottle of chutney on the other end of the table. "_Wingardium Leviosa._" The chutney floated up to eye level so that Harry could read its label.

When the chutney was obeying gravity as usual again, Sirius looked at Harry. "What were the words again?" Harry asked, his throat dry.

"_Wingardium Leviosa_," said Sirius. He demonstrated the wand movement again, slowly. "You probably won't do it the first time," he warned.

Harry nodded, and, carefully picking up his wand again and settling it in his palm, he pointed it at the chutney. He swished and flicked, trying to imitate Sirius' movements exactly. "_Wingardium Leviosa_."

It shot directly up from the table and smashed into the ceiling, scattering chunks of mango and glass across the table and the floor.

Two heads slowly rose up past the edge of the table, under which they'd ducked just before the chutney had spattered.

"Wow," whispered Harry, pulling himself unsteadily to his feet.

"Brilliant!" said Sirius, engulfing Harry in a sudden hug. "Fifty points to Gryffindor."

Harry found himself almost blinking away tears at Sirius' pride in him. "Thanks," he said, once Sirius had let him go. "Um . . . sorry about the mess."

"Pff," said Sirius dismissively. He looked at Harry, his cheek slowly dimpling. "Why don't you clean it up?"

Harry picked his wand_--his wand_!--up from the floor. "Okay," he said, half-surprising himself. "What's the . . . spell?"

"_Evanesco_," said Sirius, sweeping his wand in a sideways motion. The ceiling cleared of its spatter of chutney and embedded shards of glass.

"Right," said Harry, taking a slow breath. He looked at the table and its globs of mango. Sweeping his wand as Sirius had, he said, "_Evanesco_."

The table disappeared.

"Yes!" cheered Sirius.

"Oh, shit!" said Harry, guilt-stricken. "Can we get it back?"

Sirius waved his hand. "Good riddance to it. I may not have mentioned this, and you may not have extrapolated it since the house is an ancient pit of filth, but I actually have a lot of money. _Tons _of money, in fact, since I wasn't doing anything with all my investments all those years I was . . . sick."

"Oh," said Harry. The vast space in the middle of the floor was still a little bit alarming. On the other hand, Sirius didn't seem to mind. "Then . . . let's do another spell," he said, looking up at his godfather.

Sirius nodded. "You know, it's a little chilly down here, Harry," he said thoughtfully. "Want your jumper from your room?"

"You know, I do," agreed Harry.

It broke a hole in the banisters as it flew down from the first floor.

Half an hour had passed when Harry heard the sound of Lupin quietly coming through Grimmauld Place's door.

Lupin burst into the dining room, where Sirius and Harry were experimenting with fire. "You're . . . you're okay?" he said, slightly breathlessly. "But . . . did _you_ do all this?" He waved his arm to indicate the small bursts of various damage scattered around the ground floor.

"Harry's been doing magic!" Sirius told him proudly. "Proper spells."

"That's wonderful, Harry," said Lupin, seemingly unable to continue disapproving.

"Thanks," said Harry, glowing. His mind was absolutely buzzing with thoughts, jostling and fizzing and popping, each more delicious than the last. He was a wizard, like his parents; he could do magic; he was a wizard, like Sirius; he was a wizard, like Ginny; he was not a Squib; he could go out into the wizarding world with Sirius, once Sirius was better; _perhaps, someday, he could go to Hogwarts_.

"I learned how to make Frost's Fire," he told Lupin, creating a little flickering patch of the cooling flames in the middle of the Persian rug. They burned, pale sky blue, the rug around them completely unharmed.

"That's excellent!" said Lupin, once again teacher-like. "That's quite an advanced spell, Harry." Then, suddenly, he, too, clasped Harry in a brief hug. "I'm so pleased."

"Me too," said Harry, unable to keep a silly grin from widening over his face.

"You've still got to clean all this up, though," Lupin added strictly, more to Sirius than to Harry.

"All right," said Sirius agreeably, and the three of them spent the rest of the afternoon traipsing around the ground floor, using _reparo, scourgify_ and other spells to restore the house to its usual level of disrepair.

Harry took a short bath just before dinner, in order to remove the spatters of chutney in his hair, soot on his face, and other various side-effects of the spells he'd been learning from Sirius. When he came down the stairs, he found not only Sirius and Lupin standing around a new kitchen table, but Dumbledore, twinkling quietly in the corner of the kitchen; Mrs. Weasley; the red-haired man he'd once seen before; Ginny; three red-haired boys; and a serious-looking girl with a bushy brown ponytail.

"Hello, Harry!" said Mrs. Weasley, rushing forward to give him yet another hug. "We're so happy to hear you've been doing so well with your magic."

We? Harry glanced over at the group of unfamiliar red-heads. In its midst, Ginny gave him a tiny, conspiratorial smile.

"Oh, of course!" said Mrs. Weasley. "Well, this is Arthur, my husband." The tall red-haired man waved to Harry. "The twins are Fred and George, the tall one is Ron, next to him is Ginny--you probably don't remember, you met the night you first got here--and on the end is Hermione Granger, their friend from school."

"Hi," said Harry, stunned by the sudden crowd. "Nice to meet you all."

Something went _clunk_ in the hallway, followed by a person saying, very quietly, "Ow!"

"And that must be Tonks and Hestia just coming in," said Mrs. Weasley, hurrying out to help them.

"Everyone's here to celebrate you getting your wand and doing magic, Harry," Lupin explained.

"Congratulations!" the twins shouted, each lobbing what looked like a tiny bomb toward the centre of the cavernous ceiling. The bombs exploded into a glittering imprint of words, reading

CONGRATULATIONS

HARRY.

At this, everyone cheered and clapped, and Harry felt himself flushing. "Thanks," he said to them all, feeling that this was insufficient.

"Good on you, Harry!" said Tonks, stumbling into the kitchen with Mrs. Weasley. "I brought the cake. I didn't even drop it at all on the way." And the pink-cheeked witch, Hestia, walked in very slowly, carrying an enormous red box with a golden bow. Having placed it on the table, she tapped it with her wand. The box vanished, leaving a three-tiered red-iced cake with a bouquet of wands planted in its centre, each sparkling with red or gold glitter.

"Dinner _first_," said Mrs. Weasley pre-emptively, catching everyone's covetous glances toward the cake. With a flick of her wand, plates, cutlery and glasses were skidding through the air toward everyone's plates, and Harry was stepping back toward the wall to avoid being stuck in the scrum for dinner.

"Is this normal?" Harry whispered to Sirius. "Throwing a party when someone gets their wand?"

"Not all wizard families do it," Sirius told him. "Usually the sort of parents who spoil their kids rotten. My parents did it for my brother and me," he admitted dryly.

"Oh," said Harry. Tonks edged past him, treading very carefully among the shuffling chair-legs.

"We all need a party," Sirius said, squeezing Harry's shoulder. "Come on, let's get some of Molly's lasagne."

After Mrs. Weasley had served Harry a very large helping of lasagne and salad, he found an empty seat between one of the twins and the tall boy, Ron.

"Come on, sit down," said the twin next to Harry. "I'm Fred."

"I'm George," said the other twin, on the other side of Fred. "That's Ron, but he doesn't talk."

Harry turned to Ron questioningly. The taller boy, who had, indeed, been staring oddly at him, scowled at his brothers. "Don't believe anything they say, Harry," he advised.

"We were just talking about Quidditch," Fred said primly, ignoring Ron.

"You know about Quidditch, right, Harry?" asked George.

"Sort of," said Harry, digging into the corner of his lasagne. Suddenly, he realized he was starving, and it was completely delicious. "I've read about it--the different balls and player positions and stuff. But it's a bit difficult to picture."

"Well, we play on the Gryffindor team," said George.

"Do you?" said Harry, swallowing quickly so as to be able to talk. "What position?"

"Beaters," they answered simultaneously, miming fending off a Bludger with a beater's bat (actually, their forks) with an identical action.

"Wow," said Harry. "What's it like, flying?"

"Mum says you can come and stay at our house for a few days next week, if you want," Ron interposed. "You can come flying with us in our garden."

"I don't have a broom," Harry said apologetically. Everyone seemed to keep forgetting that he'd grown up--in fact, spent his entire life before the last week--with Muggles. Not that he minded not being thought of as different and weird, which, now he thought about it, he always had been--until now. "And . . . I've never flown before."

"Sirius will get you a broom," said George.

"And, trust us," said Fred with a wink, "flying won't be a problem."

"All right," said Harry, with some trepidation. He wasn't as confident as Fred about how easy flying would be.

The twins spent the rest of dinner regaling Harry with stories about oddities of Hogwarts (moving staircases, Peeves the poltergeist, the Fat Lady) and humiliating childhood exploits of Ron (during which Harry tried to change the subject). Ron had promised to educate Harry completely on the topic of professional Quidditch teams. Tonks had shocked Harry by transforming her face into an exact replica of his; then, after he'd got over the shock, he asked her to do Sirius and then Dumbledore. At that point, Dumbledore had wandered past for a second slice of lasagne and waved to himself.

Hermione had found Harry's _Magical Theory_ book, which he had Summoned to the kitchen earlier, and had helpfully but not condescendingly answered several questions Harry had had about the chapter he was currently reading. Ginny, who had gotten the job of distributing Harry's red-iced cake, had handed him a dessert plate containing a very generous slice with a sparkling imitation wand still stuck in the top. Last of all, just before he had gone to bed early complaining of indigestion, Lupin had given Harry permission to leave for the Weasleys' tomorrow.

Harry nestled under the covers in his brass bed. A few remaining fake wands from his cake lay in the trunk at the bottom of his bed, bound together with some twine.

"Well, don't we look pleased as punch with ourself?" asked the mirror.

"Mmm," murmured Harry. Even without his glasses, he could still make out the very blurred brown line that was his wand on his bedstand. Every once in a while, he liked to open his eyes, just to make sure it was still there, illuminated by the orange light of London's streetlamps outside and the white glow of the nearly-full moon.

* * *

"Just take a pinch of the powder, throw it in the fire, say 'The Burrow,' and step in," Sirius instructed Harry.

Harry picked up his old school backpack, now stuffed with clothes and the few books he had been reading, and heaved it over his shoulder. "Bye, Sirius," he said.

"Don't forget your broom," Sirius reminded him, passing Harry the nearly-new Firebolt he said he'd bought on a whim a few years ago. It was strange: even standing there on the cold flagstones of the kitchen in his dressing-gown, at that moment Sirius looked just like the parents at Harry's primary school had years ago, sending off their small children with a last dab of the Kleenex. "Bye, Harry. See you tomorrow."

"Bye, Remus," said Harry, turning to Lupin. "I hope you feel better."

"Thanks, Harry," said Lupin, pulling his cardigan tighter around him, as though it were chilly.

Harry took a last glance at the cavernous and creepy kitchen of Grimmauld Place, which had lately--and so quickly--become a comfortable haven for him. He'd miss his room--_his_ room, really his, not grudgingly taken from Dudley when Aunt Petunia finally accepted that Harry no longer physically fit in his cupboard. He'd miss Sirius and Remus.

"Bye," he said again, patting his pocket one last time to make sure his wand was there. Then he threw the powder into the kitchen fire, shouted "The Burrow!" and, with almost no hesitation, walked into the fire.

He tumbled out of a different fireplace, dizzy, disoriented, and with crooked glasses. He tried to stand up, and smacked his head on the mantlepiece.

"Ow!" said a sympathetic voice. Trying to focus, Harry saw a blur of brown hair and concluded that it must be the friend of the family, Hermione.

"Are you all right?" asked Ron. "Who's the Minister for Magic? What's your house?"

"I'm really not concussed," Harry promised, picking up his broom and standing up properly. "I don't know who the Minister for Magic is, but my house is Grimmauld Place."

"Hi, Harry," said Ginny, elbowing her way to the front of the mass of Weasleys. "Welcome to the Burrow." She smiled.

From what Harry could see past all the red hair, the Burrow wasn't at all like Sirius' house. It definitely lacked the creepy aspect, for one. There was a whole collection of magical DIY books above the slightly crumbling fireplace. Harry rather liked it.

"Hi," said Harry. "Thanks for letting me stay here."

"Our house is your house, Harry," said Fred jovially.

"In any case, you're sharing a room with Ron," said George.

Ron rolled his eyes.

"Let's get started, then," said Ginny, brandishing her broom. "Nice sunny weather, for a change."

"C'mon, I'll show you where you can drop your stuff," said Ron, and lead him up many floors of winding stairs until they reached Ron's room.

"The Chudley Cannons," Harry noticed, looking over Ron's postered walls.

"You've got to see them in a game one day, mate," said Ron as Harry left his backpack in a corner of his room.

"Yeah, I want to," said Harry, still rather transfixed by all the moving pictures of wizards in violently orange robes.

Once they were back in the kitchen, Ginny led them all out through the garden ("Watch out for the gnomes," she warned. "Fred and George were supposed to de-gnome the garden last week as a punishment, but they still haven't done it") and through to the orchard on the other side, where the trees would disguise their flight.

Dry and hot as the summer had been in Surrey, these trees were vivid green, their healthy leaves turning in the breeze. In their shadows, dew was still damp on the grass, which was dotted with buttercups.

"Twins versus younger Weasleys and Harry?" George suggested.

"You're on," agreed Ginny. Right away, the twins straddled their brooms and kicked off into the sky in two parallel paths.

Harry was still staring up at them as Ron was saying, "I reckon we do it like they do it at Hogwarts. That worked well--you know."

"Good idea," said Ginny, looking at Harry.

"Basically," Ron said to Harry, "just put your broom at your feet and say, 'Up!'"

By now, Harry knew just to accept the weird instructions people gave him. He did as Ginny said, and, to his surprise, his broom rose directly up and smacked into his hand.

"Now," Ron went on, "you just get on, and, er, fly."

Harry let go of his broom; it remained hovering in place in the air. Feeling utterly ridiculous, Harry swung a leg over it. "How do I . . . steer?" The thought hadn't even occurred to him before, but the broom had absolutely nothing in the way of steering mechanisms.

"You need something to chase after," Ron said slowly. He threw the red Quaffle at Ginny and pulled up on his broom to hover just above Harry's head. "Throw it back to me from up there, Ginny!"

"All right, Harry," Ginny said to him, grinning as she tucked the Quaffle under one arm. "Intercept the Quaffle!" And, swerving abruptly up, up and to Harry's far left, she pulled her arm back to send the ball hurtling in Ron's direction.

His eyes fixed on the red dot, Harry found himself almost instinctively shooting up toward it. The balls of his feet pushed against the grass, and then felt nothing--he saw the lower branches of the trees drop out of his sight--he reached for the arcing Quaffle with both hands, and, with an extra burst of speed, caught it double-handed and breathless.

"Brilliant!" said Ron.

Speechless, Harry clutched the Quaffle as though it were a treasure.

"What was it we bet on this match? Five Sickles?" Ginny shouted to the twins casually. Her ponytail had already lost several long strands of fiery hair; they whipped her cheeks as she turned.

Still gripping the Quaffle, Harry allowed himself to look down. The wind was flapping against the bottoms of his jeans, which, having been Dudley's, were huge. He was floating so far above the ground, he couldn't even distinguish the spot among the trees where he, Ginny, and Ron had been standing. In between him and the earth was nothing but . . . air. A Cabbage White fluttered in its papery way through the air just below him.

What he was doing was simply impossible, and it sent thrills through the bottom of his stomach. It was pure magic.

"This way, Harry!" Ron called, waving him over to his spot for the start of the match. As Harry zoomed over to take his place next to the others, the airstream drew invisible fingers through his hair. He wondered how far up he could fly before the magic would stop. Perhaps he could keep going forever.

"Three, two, one," Ron counted down. Harry gripped his broom hard, his hands only now beginning to tremble a little. The roofs of a nearby village shimmered dark grey in the distance. Ron blew his whistle, and the match began.

The broomsticks soared across the nearly-cloudless sky, dancing past the sun still making its ascent near the edge of the sky. Harry had thought he'd be a handicap to Ron and Ginny, but wasn't that way at all. He was a real part of their team. "Harry!" Ginny called, asking him to dart hard right to catch her throw, and Harry leaned half-over to spin the broom in the right direction and meet the Quaffle as it came toward him. "Ron!" he shouted, dodging a twin attack and shunting the ball sideways so that Ron could catch it and score the goal.

The day grew warmer, and Harry began to feel a column of sweat collecting along his spine. His hands were blistered, and he didn't even care. He dove to catch the falling Quaffle, nabbing it with one hand and zipping up again to pop up between Fred and George and chuck the ball through their goal, a purple circle inscribed in the air.

"Oh!" they howled. "You just cost us five Sickles, Harry!"

"We won!" Ron shouted gloatingly over to them, throwing his arms around his teammates' shoulders as they returned to him.

"You'll be sorry you ever took our Sickles!" warned the twins, sweeping in to join the group as it descended to land.

Harry felt light, almost weightless, dropping off his Firebolt to walk slowly with the others back to the Burrow. He couldn't wait to fly again. That alone would be wonderful, but to play real Quidditch . . . to catch the Golden Snitch, winning the game and feeling its wings tickling your palm . . . it must be incredible.

Perhaps when Sirius was better, he could take both Harry and Ron to a real Quidditch match.

Lunch at the Burrow was an astonishingly quiet affair, mostly due to the fact that everyone, including the twins, was exhausted from the morning's exercise. However, once Mrs. Weasley produced left-over slices of Harry's cake, topped with vanilla ice cream, Harry--and the Weasleys--felt much restored.

"So, you don't play Quidditch?" Harry asked Hermione politely.

Stifling a yawn, she shook her head. "Not really. At least, not when they can get someone else to make up the numbers." She smiled. "Besides, I had some reading to catch up on."

Noticing that the book next to her was titled _Advanced Charms Theory_, Harry asked, "Hermione?"

"Yes?" she said, putting down her spoon.

"Can you help me work on learning spells? I mean, I know I've been doing some but . . . I'm still pretty far behind everyone else. If you've got the time," he added awkwardly.

Hermione's face lit up. "Harry, I'd love to!"

"Oh. Great!" said Harry, relaxing.

"Do you know how long I've wished that Ron would ask me for help at school? We're in the same year, you know," Hermione told him. "But he never does. He just wants me to do it for him. Anyway, we can start after lunch. The only problem is that we'll have to restrict ourselves to theory."

"Why?"

"The Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry," she said. "Of course, it must not apply to you at Grimmauld Place . . . but we Hogwarts students aren't allowed to do spells outside of school."

"Hermione, we wanted to take Harry to the pond down the hill," Ron complained over the table.

"Just because you have no interest in learning doesn't mean it's not a valid use of time," she shot back, not completely seriously.

So it was that, as the early afternoon began, the Weasleys all marched out of the back door again, some dragging what seemed to be bottles and jars for collecting wildlife, some with various magazines and books, and all in bare feet.

"If you must go in that water, don't until it's been an hour since you finished eating!" Mrs. Weasley called after them.

The day had grown warmer, and the windows of the sitting room were open to let in a breeze. Harry and Hermione settled on the sofa under them, _Magical Theory_ open between them.

"So . . . why do you live with the Weasleys?" Harry ventured.

Hermione laughed. "I don't, really," she said. "My parents are both Muggles, and . . . well, I just like to stay with Ron and Ginny for a while during the summer."

"Oh, I see," said Harry, although he didn't, entirely. Perhaps all magical people had a different attitude towards their houses than Muggles had.

"Okay," said Hermione in a businesslike way. "Now, you just finished the chapter on wand movements, correct?"

Harry nodded.

"Then I think we should start on emotion," said Hermione. "Lots of spells, no matter how focused your intent, how correct your pronunciation and how exact your wand movement is, are dependent on your emotion as you cast them. For example, the Patronus Charm hinges on the caster's ability to focus on a happy memory."

Harry nodded again, trying to catalogue this new information against the wealth of facts he'd learned in the past few days. "What does the spell do?"

"It creates sort of a . . . protector," explained Hermione. "Usually in the shape of an animal. It's like using your own happy memories of the past to guard against present danger."

"What sort of danger?" asked Harry, a little alarmed.

"Oh, anything you want," said Hermione easily. "Advanced casters also frequently use it to carry messages."

"Cool," commented Harry with interest.

"Anyway, that's just one way in which emotion can affect a spell," Hermione continued.

The afternoon passed by as gently as its breeze, interrupted only by the occasional squawking of the chickens outside or the distant roar of a plane overhead, and the boy and girl pored over the book, the light illuminating the edges of his messy black hair and her frizzy brown.

* * *

**Author's note:**

1. So, a happy chapter to balance out the angst.

2. There might not have been a lot of plot today, but watch out for next time ; )

3. Reviews are nice.


	6. Two Lessons

"Snap!" shouted Ron triumphantly, slapping his hand down atop the pile of cards on the kitchen table just before Hermione's. The pot of begonias in the middle of the table rattled in its saucer.

Hermione and Harry laughed; Ron seemed to take the game very seriously, and was beating Hermione by a vast margin, just as he'd beaten Harry in the game before.

"Could you be a bit more quiet?" groaned Fred, passing by in his pajamas with a piece of toast. "It's only eleven a.m., for Merlin's sake."

"If you're going to go down to the village pub and get plastered trying to impress Muggle girls, it's your own fault," said Hermione unsympathetically. Just then, the paired cards Hermione was good-sportedly absorbing into her own stack exploded in her hand. She yelped and dropped them.

Fred groaned again, clutching his head with one hand while pouring himself a cup of tea with the other.

Hermione's enormous orange cat jumped off her lap, where it had been sitting and (Harry thought) judging their comparative skill at the game, and oozed toward the back door. "What is it, Crookshanks, hmm?" Hermione asked it in a talking-to-babies voice. "Is somebody in the garden?" She got up and opened the door.

"Oh," commented a figure of a girl bleached almost to whiteness by the midday sun outside. "Hello, Hermione. Hello, Harry. Hello, Ron." Her hand was raised as though she had been just about to knock.

She moved forward into the shadow of the house; her hair darkened to dirty blonde, and her eyes were revealed to be rather larger than usual and apparently eyebrowless. Her wand was stuck through the somewhat straggly bun into which her hair was twisted. With some amazement, Harry thought that her gaze might even be more disturbing than Dumbledore's, albeit in a different way.

"I thought your ghoul had come downstairs, but it's just your brother," she said dreamily.

Fred moaned and began to stagger back up the stairs.

"Hi, Luna," said Hermione, scooping Crookshanks up into her arms, where he purred. "Er . . . what brings you here?"

"I was out for a walk," said Luna thoughtfully.

"Ah," said Hermione. "Harry, this is Luna Lovegood. She lives nearby . . . I think. We've met a few times in the library."

"Hi," said Harry, standing up. All wizards and witches were a little eccentric, but, spotting her radish earrings, he had to admire the way Luna had really embraced oddness. "I don't know whether Ron or Ginny told you about me . . ." he began.

"No, they didn't, but Ginny's dad told my father and he told me, in case I ran into you," said Luna, tickling Crookshanks behind his ears. His purring grew even louder. "I was very sad when I heard about what happened to you, Harry."

Harry didn't quite know what to say to that. Nobody else had really mentioned it. Did she know how horrible the Dursleys were, or was she just talking about not knowing he was a wizard until he was fifteen? "It's all right, really," he mumbled. "Do you . . . do you want to play Snap with us?"

"I'm terrible at it, but I like watching," Luna said, and she sat down next to Harry, who drew another card. "Did you know that Exploding Snap can be used as a method of Divination?"

"Like real fortune-telling?" asked Harry, interested.

Across the table, Hermione shook her head, very slightly.

"Well, most Divination doesn't work," Luna went on distantly. "It all depends on the person doing it, because existence, being only perception, depends upon the perceiver. Snap," she added, just before Ron shouted the word and slammed his hand on the top of the middle pile of cards again.

"You win, Ron," acceded Hermione with a sigh.

"Oh, hi, Luna," said a slightly surprised voice from the kitchen door. Harry and Luna turned to see Ginny standing in it with her hands on her hips. "Fred's a lost cause," she announced, "but George's coming down in a minute, thanks to a bit of persuasion."

"Are you practicing spells?" asked Luna. "I know some good ones."

"We _were_ going to show Harry a bit of wizard dueling before he goes back to--his house," said Ginny, her eyes narrowing, "but the twins decided to go out and get legless last night."

"Yes, I saw," said Luna. "Is George going to duel himself, then? That would be interesting."

"No, he's just going to demonstrate some basic dueling spells on us," Ginny said. "Wish _we_ could duel him, but Mum'd go mad if she found out we'd been doing underage dueling."

"All right, all right, here I am," yawned a dishevelled but dressed George, appearing behind Ginny with a large cup of tea of his own.

"Good," said Ginny. "Let's go into the sitting room."

"So . . . dueling's another sport at Hogwarts, like Quidditch?" asked Harry as they all squeezed onto the sofa.

"No," said Luna distantly.

"Not really," said Hermione, fiddling with her skirt hem.

"People do it for fun, though?" said Harry, getting more confused.

"Some people do," said Luna.

"Well, yes," said Hermione, looking flustered--probably because Luna was answering all Harry's questions before her.

"All right, George," instructed Ginny, standing by her brother like a lion tamer. "Can you show us a Shield Charm?"

"Yeah, probably," said George, and, throwing out his wand, said, "_Protego!_"

"There's an example of a spell that's got to have force behind it," whispered Hermione to Harry.

Ginny picked up some cushions from the vacant chairs and threw them at George. Although Harry hadn't been able to see any visual result of the spell, the cushions seemed to bounce off an invisible barrier about a foot from George's head. "Shield Charm: does what it says on the tin," commented George, picking up a book called _Basic Duelling_ from next to the wireless. He flipped through it. "What next?" he asked tiredly.

"Let's try Disarming next," decided Ginny. She picked up another pillow and drew back her arm to throw it at George again.

"_Expelliarmus_!" said George, twirling his wand, and the pillow flew out of Ginny's hand and into the wall.

"Usually, you use that to Disarm someone who's going to cast something on you," explained Ginny, "but since I can't do magic at the moment there's no point using a wand."

"What kind of things would the person cast on you?" asked Harry, his brow wrinkling slightly. He still didn't really understand why everyone was going out of their way to show him dueling when, as far as he was concerned, he'd never want to play the sport.

"Oh," said Ginny, "there's _millions_ of things."

"Stunners," volunteered George.

"The full Body-Bind--paralyzes you completely for a while," contributed Ron.

"Or something more interesting, like the Jelly-Legs jinx."

"_Rictusempra_ just tickles you," said George, looking slightly more alert. "Or the antler jinx, that's quite a good new one. Ginny's very good at the Bat-Bogey."

"The . . . antler jinx?" repeated Harry, blinking. "It gives you antlers?"

"Yeah, but it's not hard to get rid of them," said George.

"In first year, people were always casting _Tarantallegra _on me," said Luna helpfully. "That one makes you dance."

"Yes, but the Shield Charm can block all of those," said Hermione quickly.

"I see," said Harry. Sometimes he was a little alarmed by magical people's abandon with spells; both Sirius and the Weasleys seemed interested only in seeing what their magic could do, with the attitude that, if something got blown up or turned into a wombat accidentally, they'd just change it back. Harry didn't think he'd like having antlers, even if they could be removed quite easily.

But, then, he'd grown up in the Muggle world, where your chair or your head didn't just change with a flick of someone else's wrist. Hermione, who'd grown up with Muggles, too, seemed to feel more like he did about it all. Being around her was reassuring; you knew she wasn't going to try to slip you a potion that would give you hiccups for the next hour, for one, but it was also like stepping back from the wild dream of constant magic that was the Weasleys into the real world, where things were real and solid and certain.

And Harry knew too well that some things couldn't be fixed, even with magic . . .

"Harry?" said Ron, poking him in the ribs. "George just Stunned Ginny."

"Oh," said Harry. "Yes." Ginny was, indeed, sprawled unconscious on the floor next to a few cushions. George bent over her and said "_Renervate_," and she sat up again and waved to Harry.

"You see?" she said, fixing her ponytail.

Harry nodded again.

"What are you lot doing in there?" called Mrs. Weasley from the kitchen.

"Nothing, Mum," the Weasleys chorused.

"Good," said Mrs. Weasley, appearing with a wicker basket on her arm. "I've made you a picnic lunch, so you can go back down to the orchard, if you want."

"Thanks, Mum," said George, taking the basket from her at once. "Come on, children. Lunch calls."

Quickly kicking the dueling book under the sofa, Ginny followed her brother out, trailed by Ron and Hermione and, in the back, Harry and Luna.

"Your parents died," said Luna, apropos of nothing.

"Yes, I know," said Harry, caught completely off-guard.

"My mother liked to experiment with magic," Luna mentioned as they started out into the wealth of green behind the Burrow. "One day, one of her spells went wrong, and it killed her."

By now, Harry's mouth was completely dry. "I'm sorry," he managed to say.

"But, before that, she was one of the foremost research witches in Britain," Luna went on. "She helped formulate or improve hundreds of spells the Wizarding World uses today, including some of the acceleration charms on top-notch brooms like the Firebolt . . . and she convinced Honeydukes to add my gran's Cockroach Clusters to their permanent line of sweets."

"Wow," said Harry, softly.

"I'm still working on some of the things she never finished," Luna added, absently re-twisting her disarrayed hair into a new bun and sliding her wand back through it. "Nobody's ever managed to find a proper magical cure for men going bald, you know. Or hangovers. Or Wrackspurt affliction."

"Nobody's ever found a cure for those things in the Muggle world, either," said Harry, surprised.

"Yes," said Luna dreamily.

"Here we are, then," said Ron, flopping down onto a suitable patch of grass under shifting shade from a tree. He opened the picnic basket. "Urgh, leftover sandwiches."

"Will you stay and have lunch with us?" Harry asked Luna.

"No, I think I'll walk home, since people usually prefer not to share their food," answered Luna. "Bye, Harry. Bye, Ginny. Bye, Ron and George and Hermione."

She wandered off over the hill.

"Barmy," commented Ron, biting into a meatloaf sandwich. "I've run into her once or twice around here, but I've never actually talked to her, and she's never just turned up at the house before," he told Harry.

"Oh, she's not that bad," said George. "If the worst we had at Hogwarts was people like her, we'd all have an easier life."

Harry pondered what that meant as he bit into his sandwich. It was still quite delicious, although a bit dry. "I liked her," he said, as an afterthought.

* * *

Then, after lunch and all too soon, it was time for Harry to go back to Grimmauld Place. The entire family gathered around the fireplace again to wave him off; even though it had only been a few days, it seemed like ages ago that they'd gathered around to greet him practically as strangers.

"Write to us whenever you want to, Harry," Hermione instructed him, handing him his bookbag.

"We'll write to you, too," said Ron.

"All right," agreed Harry. Ron's tiny owl, Pigwidgeon, fluttered down and sat on his shoulder, rather preventing him from picking up his broom. Harry tickled it under what he thought was its chin, and it squeaked and fell to the flagstoned floor in delight, then fluttered back up to the countertop. "Hey, perhaps when you go to Diagon Alley to get your school things, we can go together!"

"Yeah," said Ron.

Thank you for having me," Harry said to Mrs. Weasley, really meaning it. Harry completely understood why Hermione would have chosen to spend her summer here. "It was fantastic."

"You can stay here whenever you want, Harry," she told him, almost severely.

"Thanks for all the lessons, Hermione," Harry said, turning to the bushy-haired witch, who had become quite a friend in the last few days.

"Thanks for teaching me to fly," he said to Ron and Ginny.

"Hardly even had to," said Ron honestly.

"It was nice, Harry," said Ginny, tucking her hair behind her ear.

"I'll definitely write to you," Harry promised them all. He threw the Floo powder into the fire and took in one last glance at the Burrow's kitchen: Mrs. Weasley, looking worried; the twins, completely confident; Ron, looking surprisingly downcast; clever Hermione, who always kept her emotions mostly tucked away. His friends. "Bye!" they all said, waving.

Harry felt a twinge of sadness mix in for the first time with the happiness of his stay. Grimmauld Place would certainly seem quiet now. "Bye!" he said in reply.

As he turned back to face the fireplace, Harry thought he saw, at the farther end of the table where the twins had been sitting, the words **YOU-KNOW-WHO** as part of the headline on a folded newspaper. But the wizarding world didn't have a newspaper, did it?

The Floo powder was burning, though, so Harry said "Grimmauld Place!" and stepped into the green flames.

"There you are!" said Sirius, leaping up from his chair to catch Harry as he tumbled out of this kitchen's very different fireplace.

"Sirius!" said Harry. His godfather was still wearing his dressing-gown, as usual. Harry had forgotten how Sirius always smelled slightly smoky, almost as though he'd just gotten out of a house fire, or as though he smoked, which he didn't. The way Sirius helped him up was so familiar, too, although Harry hadn't ever thought about it before. Sirius didn't squeeze Harry like Mrs. Weasley did; for all the recklessness with which Sirius did everything else, he hugged Harry gently, as though his godson was something very precious that might break.

Harry felt a tug in his chest as he remembered the first time he'd met Sirius, and how touched he'd been that Sirius, obviously ill as he was, had made such an effort to be cheerful in order to make Harry feel comfortable.

Harry hugged Sirius back as hard as he could. "What've you two been up to, then?" he asked, looking between Sirius and Lupin, who was sitting at the table, looking quite exhausted.

Sirius smiled. "Nothing very interesting," he said. "But I want to know about your time with the Weasleys. Did the twins manage to pull one over one you?"

"They _tried _a few things," said Harry wryly, and Sirius laughed.

"Did you have fun?"

Harry dropped his bag and broom on the floor and pulled a chair into the table. "Yeah, I did," he said, resting his chin on his palm. "We did some flying, which was brilliant, and Hermione helped me with some magic theory, and--hey, Sirius, do you know the Patronus Charm?"

Sirius lifted an eyebrow. "Moony, I think this one's yours, if you're up to it," he said to Lupin with amusement.

"Absolutely," said Lupin, sitting up straight. "Harry, how did you hear about the Patronus Charm, and why do you want to try it?"

"Hermione told me about it when she was teaching me about emotions in spellcasting," described Harry. "And I wanted to try it because--well, it sounded cool, I guess." He shrugged a little sheepishly. "I thought it would be interesting to find out what shape mine was, you know?"

Lupin and Sirius glanced at one another; again, they both seemed amused for some unknown reason.

"That seems perfectly reasonable," Lupin assented. "I presume Hermione told you about the mental necessities for casting the spell, then?"

"She told me I had to focus on a happy memory," recalled Harry. "She said it was like I was drawing on the power and strength of that memory to protect me now. Because no matter how bad you feel now, a happy memory can't be taken away from you."

"Yes, that's the . . . theory," said Lupin, adjusting his cuffs. "Well, that's Hermione for you--she learns everything, and she never forgets," he smiled. "I used to teach her, you know. Hermione, Ron--all of them."

Harry felt another tiny pang--not quite of regret, but not really of jealousy either--that his friends had gotten to have Lupin as their teacher. Harry felt certain Lupin must have been a perfect teacher--strict but not harsh, understanding but not a push-over.

"Well, if you've got a memory in mind, all you need is the incantation. It's _Expecto Patronum_."

"_Expecto Patronum_," Harry repeated to himself.

"Give it a try," suggested Sirius.

Harry thought about the day he'd first gotten his wand. He'd felt as though he'd been bursting with happiness, with relief that he wasn't a Squib. The experience of doing magic for the first time--it had been joy. Just joy.

But maybe that memory wasn't what he needed for this spell. Being able to do magic--it wasn't a happiness that could protect you at your darkest moment.

Then Harry thought of how Sirius had helped him up so carefully when he'd fallen out of the fire, and the time Sirius had sat with him and named every person in his photo album, and all the times Sirius had answered his questions about the Wizarding World so patiently, and he felt a different kind of happiness, a quiet kind of happiness glowing firmly in the centre of his chest, like a pilot light. Every one of those times, he'd known Sirius loved him--this reckless, quick-tempered, damaged man, trying to be the parent that Harry needed.

"_Expecto Patronum_!" Harry shouted, throwing out his wand.

A big, silvery animal bounded out of the end of his wand, did a lap around the room, stared up at Harry, and then seemed to evaporate.

"Cool!" said Harry. "What was it, a bear or something? Did you see, Remus?"

Lupin cleared his throat. "I think it was a dog," he said at last.

"Cool," said Harry again. He wondered what that said about him. That he was loyal, perhaps? Dutiful? It didn't seem to say anything bad. Harry was quite pleased it hadn't turned out to be something weird like, oh, a newt or a rat.

But neither Lupin nor Sirius seemed pleased. They were both sitting quite still at the table.

"That was right, wasn't it?" said Harry, now having doubts. "There wasn't anything wrong with having a dog, was there?"

"No, not at all," Lupin assured him. "You did the spell admirably, and there's nothing wrong with having a dog."

"Okay," said Harry, still not completely convinced.

"How did you find flying?" asked Lupin, changing the subject.

"Well," began Harry, not wanting to be immodest. "It was kind of easy, really. Actually, I was going to ask whether Ron and I could go to a Chudley Cannons game together sometime, because he's a big fan . . ."

"I'll talk to Mrs. Weasley about it," promised Lupin.

"Okay," said Harry again, now feeling distinctly uncomfortable. "I'll just . . . I'll just go and unpack my things upstairs." And, trying to walk at a normal pace, he went up to his room and flopped on his bed.

"What did I do?" he said to himself, looking out of the window.

The mirror snorted.

"What?" Harry asked it.

It said nothing.

"Bugger," said Harry miserably, lying back on the bed and looking up at the ceiling. He wished he knew what was going on . . . not just with this, but overall. Everything had been so perfect, he'd been ignoring the feeling at the bottom of his stomach telling him that something wasn't quite right.

What about that paper that had said "You-Know-Who," anyway? Harry was more and more convinced that he had seen those words. Before, he'd thought Tonks was just being odd, referring to someone by that name, but if a newspaper was using the name in a headline, it must be a person's real name, and that person must be famous. And he'd never seen a wizarding newspaper before.

It was just a small thing, but . . .

Harry sat up. He might not be able to find out what the bigger weirdness was, but he could at least find the answer to this little mystery. He hopped off the bed and pulled the enormous encyclopedia down onto the covers again.

Would the encyclopedia really have a listing for You-Know-Who? Well, it was worth a try. Who knew? Wizards were so mad, one of them had probably changed his name to You-Know-Who for a joke.

At last, Harry actually found the entry. He hadn't really expected it to be there.

**You-Know-Who**: see **Voldemort.**

* * *

**Author's note: **

1. Reviews are nice. Thanks if you did.

2. I'm gradually getting closer to the end of the stuff I had already written and was just editing, so there may be increasing time between updates (no more than a week, though, and probably less).

3. Next time: it all hits the fan.


	7. Two Names

**You-Know-Who**: see **Voldemort**. Now, _that _was a creepy name: even Harry knew that _mort_ meant _death_. If he'd been named Voldemort, he thought, he probably would have changed his name, too.

He flipped a few letters back.

**Vampire**. Too far back.

**Veela**. Closer.

**Voldemort**.

"**Voldemort**: also known as the Dark Lord, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and You-Know-Who, this dark wizard rose to terrifying power during the 1970s, his influence growing to a peak between the Winter of Discontent (1979) and 1981."

His fingers trembling slightly, he turned the book over to check that it actually was the encyclopedia.

It was the encyclopedia, and everything he'd read before in it had been correct.

But this didn't even sound real. Dark wizards? Dark Lords? It was like fantasy.

Of course, the Wizarding World had always seemed like fantasy to him.

"Voldemort's agenda was based on pureblood supremacy: his followers, the Death Eaters, were known for their brutal attacks on Muggles, Muggle-born witches and wizards, and, increasingly, on any witches and wizards who opposed him. During Voldemort's era, fear and paranoia reigned in the wizarding world.

"Voldemort was often associated with Hogwarts' Slytherin house and its symbol, the serpent. His Dark Mark, which was placed in the sky over a home that had been attacked, consisted of a skull with a snake as its tongue.

"Voldemort's true name, age, and history are a blank to us. He was known merely as the most powerful wizard of the century, with the exception of Albus Dumbledore, who was said to be the only man Voldemort ever feared.

"However, Voldemort's downfall, when it came, was not at the hands of Dumbledore. He was defeated by a one-year-old baby boy named Harry Potter, by means that are to this day a mystery (for more information, see entry on **Potter, Harry**).

After his defeat on October 31, 1981, Voldemort's followers, including Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange and Sirius Black, were imprisoned in Azkaban."

Harry could feel his pulse thudding in his throat—not quickly, but slowly and steadily, his body's autonomic function keeping him alive.

Surely, they must be talking about some other Harry Potter. That must be it. It wasn't that unusual a name. And he'd never done any magic before in his life, so he couldn't have defeated this Voldemort person on . . . October 31, 1981 . . .

That was the day his parents had died.

"Oh, my God," said Harry, his hands covering his mouth. He must be going mad. It was the only possible explanation. How else could the date in this book and the date he knew so well be the same?

And then—Sirius Black? Sirius Black, the escaped prisoner from two summers ago, was Sirius Black, the follower of Voldemort.

For a moment, Harry stopped breathing altogether.

Sirius—_his _Sirius—had never told Harry his last name. And he'd been ill for . . . how long?

_Since just after Harry's parents had died. _Since just after Voldemort's defeat. And now Sirius was . . . better . . . but not well enough to go outside . . .

But Sirius had _loved_ Harry's father. Sirius had loved Harry from the moment he'd met him for no better reason than that he was his best friend's son. Even if everything else he'd read was true—even if he had, somehow, incredibly, defeated this terrifying Dark Lord—Harry couldn't believe that Sirius had ever helped the wizard who had killed his parents.

Even if he believed everything else, Harry refused to believe that.

"All right," he told himself, with shivering calm. "You're not going to believe anything about Sirius until you talk to him. You're just going to look at . . . you're going to look up Harry Potter." It felt weird saying his own name out loud, and it sounded different now. Harry Potter. The same sounds, but a different meaning.

He paged back through the huge book to **Potter, Harry**.

"**Potter, Harry**: Born July 31st, 1980, this wizard, also known as The Boy Who Lived, became famous at only one year of age for his defeat of Voldemort.

"On the night of October 31st, 1981, Voldemort attacked the home of Lily and James Potter, prominent opponents of his who had recently gone into hiding. The Dark Lord killed the adult Potters, but their infant son miraculously survived, marked only by a scar in the shape of a lightning bolt on his forehead; instead of him, it was Voldemort who died. The method of Harry's victory remains unidentified.

"Harry began attending Hogwarts in 1991 and was sorted into Gryffindor, where he became the youngest Seeker on a Hogwarts Quidditch team for a century. Additional notable accomplishments of Harry Potter to date include his selection as a fourth Triwizard Champion in the 1994 revived Triwizard Tournament, despite the fact that a first Hogwarts Champion had already been selected. Harry went on to win the Tournament.

"Sirius Black, the wizard who betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort, escaped from Azkaban in 1993 with the rumoured goal of killing Harry. Black has not yet been re-captured."

Harry closed his eyes to keep his vision from greying.

This book was old. In Harry's hands, the leather binding felt cracked and aged. Of course, it was magically self-updating, so that meant nothing, but these were facts about his life printed in ancient-looking type on what seemed to be parchment in the house of a man who, less than two weeks ago, had been a stranger.

These were personal facts about him, not things that everyone should know. His birthday. His scar, which, up until now, he'd always liked. His parents' death. His mum and dad. His name. This was _his life_, him, summed up in a few paragraphs in a book.

But, of course, it wasn't his name or his life. Harry had lived with the Dursleys until this summer. He remembered it.

But little realizations, terrifying in their logic, were seeping in everywhere through his shock.

_Attacks on any witches and wizards who opposed them_. "They got married not long after your parents. The Longbottoms." All the missing friends whose names made Sirius' voice tight . . .

_Voldemort killed the adult Potters_ . . . Hadn't Harry thought, over and over again, that a car crash shouldn't have killed a witch and wizard? But that was ridiculous. That would mean that this Harry Potter was him, and it couldn't be, because he hadn't been at Hogwarts. He'd been at Stonewall High. He didn't even know what a Triwizard Tournament was!

But . . . _sorted into Gryffindor__**. **_Ron and Hermione: they were both in the same school year as him, and both Gryffindors. In fact, all the kids he'd been introduced to were in Gryffindor.

All of them.

Harry tried to think back to the night when Dumbledore, Lupin and Shacklebolt had come to pick him up from the Dursleys'. Hadn't they been acting as though Harry and his relatives should recognize them?

"Do you recognize me?" Mrs. Weasley had asked.

But he hadn't. That was the problem. Harry hadn't recognized her.

And now, sitting on the edge of his bed with his eyes closed, his full backpack leaning against his feet and the encyclopedia open across his pillow, Harry understood his choices.

Number one: He had gone mad. He was in an iron NHS bed, tied down, dribbling, and ranting about magic. He'd incorporated the name of the escaped prisoner, Sirius Black, into his fantasy, and he'd tried to find a better explanation for his parents' death. He'd imagined himself as someone important, famous, heroic . . . Look at that encyclopedia entry. It was nauseating. Youngest Seeker in a century. Fourth Triwizard champion. The Boy Who Lived.

That was bad enough. But the other choice . . .

Number two: The encyclopedia was right. He had gone to Hogwarts and played as Gryffindor Seeker and won this Tournament thing. And then, sometime between then and now, he'd forgotten it all.

A lot of things were possible with magic, Harry thought. Maybe even changing someone's memory . . .

And that was worse. Four years of going to Hogwarts, that place he'd been dreaming of visiting ever since he'd heard it existed, and now he found out he had been there and forgotten? It was a cruel irony.

If that was true, then he wanted those memories back. His fists clenched on his bedspread. How could anyone take that from him and leave him with what he had now?

Harry's toes began to get pins and needles, and he still sat there with his eyes closed. He wanted to cry. For the first time ever, he could actually picture someone to go to. He wanted to go to Sirius and shout and cry and be told it was all a mistake.

But he was going to be sensible.

He padded down the stairs again in his socks and found the white owl sitting in an open cage on the kitchen windowsill.

"All unpacked?" asked Lupin, looking up from a book.

"Not quite," said Harry, hating to lie to this man who'd always been so kind to him. "I'm just going to write to Hermione . . . I forgot one of my books at the Burrow."

"There's parchment in that drawer," Lupin pointed out helpfully before returning to his book.

It had taken barely any thought for him to decide on Hermione. She was the only one who could give him an answer that was fact. As Harry was now seriously considering the possibility that he might be insane, he needed someone grounded in reality.

Harry took the owl's cage and the guilty parchment upstairs and, with a fountain pen he'd found in the very bottom of his bookbag, he wrote _To Hermione_ on the outside of the folded page.

He opened it, and his pen hovered over the cream-colored parchment. What could he possibly write? _Dear Hermione, have I lost my mind, or did someone else take it? _

In the end, he wrote just one sentence, folded the paper again, and offered it awkwardly to the white owl. "Will you take this to Hermione, please?" he asked it.

The owl took the letter from his fingers quite gently and, after pausing to hint that Harry should open the window, swooped off into the night with the message: _Am I the Boy who Lived_?

"Letter all written?" said Sirius, poking his head around the edge of Harry's door. "Dinner's ready. I made it today, though, so . . ." He grinned.

"Great," said Harry, jumping down off the edge of the bed to follow Sirius to the kitchen. "I'm so tired from everything I did with the Weasleys, I think I might've fallen asleep if you hadn't come to get me."

"Then I'm glad I did," said Sirius, resting his hand on Harry's shoulder. "It's just omelettes tonight," he said, slightly apologetically, "but we've got peas, too. And you can go to bed right after dinner if you want, Harry."

Acting tired during dinner was easy. It hadn't been untrue to say that living with the Weasleys was sort of exhausting, and staring at his omelette was easier than trying to talk to Sirius and Remus. He just let their conversation drift over his head; it didn't seem to have to do with anything interesting, anyway, as they were discussing the choice of host nation for the next Quidditch World Cup (controversially, France).

As soon as he'd eaten his omelette—which had tasted of nothing, as had the peas and his juice—he'd crawled back up to his bed and lain there on top of the covers in his jeans and t-shirt. Perhaps it was being back in London, but the night was hot. Had Hermione gotten his message? He'd really just been guessing about how owl post worked. Was his letter mad enough that she wouldn't reply?

At three a.m., late enough that even Sirius had gone to bed, Ron's tiny owl flapped through Harry's window and landed on Harry's face. Harry carefully moved it and took the scrap of paper from its claws.

_Coming. _

So Hermione had known who'd sent her the message, even though he hadn't signed it. And, by the look of her handwriting, she'd written back in a hurry.

Harry only knew one way to get from the Burrow to Grimmauld Place.

Very slowly, he moved down the stairs and back down to the kitchen, easing his weight off each step and floorboard with the skill he'd learned from fifteen years of having to sneak down to the Dursleys' kitchen at night for food (with the knowledge that, if he wasn't stealthy enough, the punishment would be severe). When he finally squeezed past the kitchen door, though, Hermione wasn't there.

The waning moon and the streetlights painted the kitchen even greyer than it usually was. The ceiling seemed to extend up into infinite shadow; the chairs and table looked fixed and vacant, as though the house had been abandoned for years. Hot as the night was, the flagstones were cold under Harry's feet, so he curled them underneath him in his chair, rested his head on the table, and waited.

He didn't feel mad. The kitchen table felt hard and boring and wooden under his arm. The night sky past the window, with its stars obscured by London's never-extinguished lights, looked real, not like an imagined sky with sparkling constellations and a big crescent moon. But, of course, mad people never thought they were mad.

He had no way of definitely knowing.

At least half an hour had gone by when Harry saw a blaze of green in the fireplace. He sat up at once to see Hermione stumbling out into the half-light.

Struck with last-minute awkwardness, Harry stared at his fingernails for a moment before he stood up to greet her. What could he possibly say?

But he never had to decide, because Hermione had thrown her arms around his neck and was now crying into his shoulder.

Feeling that it would be rude not to, Harry hugged her back.

"Oh, Harry," she wept into his T-shirt, hugging him more tightly, as though she wasn't sure he was real. "I've missed you so much. We've been trying so hard to help you—I've been looking and looking through the most advanced books on Memory Charms, and Ginny's been trying to work out which Death Eater could have done that to you, and the twins have been going through the whole last fifty year's records of anyone whose job it is to do Memory Charms at the Ministry, if you believe it, and we couldn't even find out what they'd used to do such a horrible thing, and—oh, Harry, what would we have done without you?" At last, she pulled back and looked at him. Her face was absolutely wrecked, swollen and red from crying, Harry saw with a shock. Her eyes, though, traced over his features with wonder and joy and love and intimate recognition, and he looked away, unable to reveal to her that he couldn't recognize her in the same way. He hadn't understood, before, that they must have been best friends.

"Harry, don't be embarrassed!" she told him, gripping his upper arm. "All that matters is that you're remembering now." Using her sleeve, she wiped away another wave of tears. "It was so awful. We didn't know what we were going to do to bring your memories back," she confessed, half-laughing with happiness. "But you managed it by yourself," she said affectionately, still weeping. "Typical."

"Hermione," said Harry, still unable to look at her, "I was Gryffindor Seeker in my first year, right? And last year I was a Triwizard Champion?"

"Yes, you were," said Hermione, still looking at him with that watery smile.

"Hermione," said Harry, now staring at his fingers again. He had to be brave. "I . . . I read that stuff in a book. I don't remember." And feeling how bitterly he must be disappointing her, and everyone else who knew him, he said, "I'm sorry."

The room was still. "No, I'm sorry," said Hermione after a moment. "I jumped to conclusions. Sirius was supposed to have gotten all the history books out of the house, so I didn't even think you might have read it."

"We were good friends, weren't we?" asked Harry suddenly.

"Yes," said Hermione simply.

For some reason, among all the questions he had, the one about the Patronus Charm bobbed up in his mind. "I did the Patronus Charm today," he told her, back again in the persona of the student he'd been at the Burrow. "But . . . I think it was wrong. I think it was the wrong animal," he realized.

"What animal was it?" asked Hermione. She pulled out a kitchen chair and sat in it tensely, her feet resting together on its lowest rung.

"It was a dog," said Harry. "A big dog." He sat down next to her, tracing the grain of the wooden table with his nail.

"It was supposed to be a stag," said Hermione quietly. "Your father was an Animagus, like Sirius, and his form was a stag. Your Patronus before was always a stag."

"God, I forgot Sirius was a—I forgot," said Harry, resting his forehead on the table in despair. "It was Sirus as a dog. Of course it was."

"Sirius!" said Hermione to herself. "Harry, what did the book say about Sirius?"

Harry sat up. "It said he betrayed my parents. That he was a . . . Death Eater," said Harry, not even wanting to say it.

"He was innocent," Hermione told him intensely. "Sirius was never a Death Eater, and he didn't escape to kill you."

"I thought so," said Harry, finally daring to look up at Hermione. For the first time tonight, he felt able to take a deep breath.

"You were right," Hermione said softly, putting her hand over his on the table.

A car honked outside, reminding Harry of the vast city around them, strange to him and to magic. Sirius' house was a bastion against it all, the half-alive night of London, but he was more aware than he'd ever been of how near the chaos and dark of the city was.

Hermione was just watching him; her hand was knuckly, he noticed, with short nails, but holding his like an anchor, and he thought he could sense a glimmer of the bond there had once been between them.

"Hermione, what am I going to do?" he asked at last. "I don't even know what I don't know."

Hermione took in a deep breath. "There's one more thing you should know that you probably don't," she said. "Voldemort isn't dead."

A siren wailed outside. "Okay," said Harry, swallowing.

"When he failed to kill you when you were a baby, he didn't die completely," said Hermione slowly. "He's been coming back to power for a few years now . . . and, at the end of last spring, he got his body back. Now he's rising even faster than he did before. Nobody imagined he'd be able to attack you like that . . . It seems as though he's ready now to start his war all over again."

"Like last time?"

"Like last time," said Hermione, "except . . . now we've got you to fight him. Harry, you're the Boy Who Lived. You're basically the wizarding world's hope of defeating Voldemort for good. Nobody else could do it last time, not even Dumbledore. That's why . . . when you lost your memories, we were terrified. If you had to learn magic from the beginning again . . . we were afraid that, by the time you were ready to face Voldemort, it would be too late."

"So the Death Eaters, or Voldemort, attacked me," said Harry. He tried to keep his voice sounding normal. "Why didn't they just . . . kill me?"

"Maybe they couldn't," said Hermione quietly. "Voldemort's tried to kill you more than once since that time when you were a baby, Harry. He's never been able to." She lowered her voice even more, as though she didn't want to keep talking. "I've wondered whether Voldemort gave up on killing you, and this was his idea of stopping you in a different way."

Harry's bones were aching with tension and exhaustion, but he had to ask. "Is there any way to get my memories back?"

"We haven't even been able to pinpoint the spell that was used on you," Hermione said, her eyes filling with tears. "That makes it a lot more difficult to reverse it. Professor Dumbledore has an idea . . . but he doesn't want to do it unless he has to. We were hoping your memories might come back on their own, somehow." She pulled her jumper's sleeves over her hands. "Dumbledore said he couldn't find any of your old memories when he looked in your mind, but he did feel . . . echoes. And you remembered your spells—or, you didn't consciously, but something in you remembered, because otherwise you wouldn't have been able to do something like a Patronus. That's OWL-level magic, you know.

"We'd hoped you might remember more."

"I've only remembered . . . dreams I used to have when I was little. A golden ball with wings—oh, that must be the Snitch," he realized with a tiny smile. Having never seen one, he hadn't made the connection between the Quidditch ball he'd read about and the thing in his childhood dreams. "I used to dream about a Snitch."

"What else?"

"A . . . a flying motorbike."

"I don't know about that," Hermione confessed. "But maybe your mum or dad had one."

"A . . . just a flash of green light," said Harry, feeling foolish.

Hermione, though, seemed to recognize the description. "That's the _Avada Kedavra_," she whispered. "The Killing Curse."

Harry felt sick.

"Sorry," said Hermione.

"Would you . . . will you stay here until Sirius and Remus wake up?" he asked her. "I've got to tell them, but I . . ." He didn't want to have to tell them alone.

"I'll stay," said Hermione. "I don't think I could sleep, anyway."

"Thank you," said Harry. Even though he was nearly as tall as Lupin, at this moment he felt very small. "Hermione?"

"Yes?"

"All that duelling stuff . . . that was for defending myself against Voldemort, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"I'd have to use something like . . . _Avada Kedavra_ against him, then?"

"Yes," said Hermione again. "You see, _Avada Kedavra_ can't be blocked. I mean, not only yours but—his, too."

Harry had never fought anyone before—at least, not that he remembered. Dudley's gang didn't count, because when he hadn't been running away he'd just been getting beaten up.

"I think we've got some Exploding Snap cards in one of these drawers," he said, standing up to look.

"Bit noisy."

"Oh. Right." He sat down again.

"I'm sorry, Harry," said Hermione, putting her hand over his again. "I know it's not fair. But . . . I know you. You've done some pretty amazing things. I mean, once, in first year, you and Ron took down a troll together without any help."

"Really?" He wished he remembered. It sounded like a memory worth keeping.

"Oh, yes," said Hermione. "And you learned the Patronus Charm all by yourself in third year. Professor Lupin taught you in special lessons. And you once rescued Ginny from a Basilisk all by yourself."

She went on, sounding almost like a mother making up fantasy stories about her child and his friends. Professor Lupin had once been his teacher, Harry thought. Harry was sure he'd liked that. And he'd rescued Ginny . . . it was difficult to imagine Ginny as a damsel in distress, needing to be rescued from a monster.

As the sun rose, it seemed to illuminate the connections between himself and all the people he'd met, like strands of web he hadn't seen before. Hermione was still talking at 6:10 a.m. when Lupin sleepily pushed the kitchen door open, still in his pajamas, dressing gown and slippers.

"Hermione!" he said in surprise. "Is something the matter?"

"No," she said, and then corrected herself. "But we'd like to talk to you and Sirius."

"I'll get Sirius up," said Lupin at once, hurrying worriedly out of the room. It seemed as though he was gone for hours as Hermione and Harry sat in silence, but eventually he returned with a haggard but very alert-looking Sirius in tow.

They both sat at the table across from Harry and Hermione. "Harry has something he wants to tell you," she said. Sirius' eyes, taking in Harry and Hermione together, bugged out, and Hermione quickly flushed and added, "No, no! It's just . . . go on, Harry."

"Um . . ." said Harry miserably. He didn't want to make the same mistake with Sirius and Lupin that he'd made with Hermione: making them think he'd gotten his memories back when he hadn't. To his humiliation, he felt the weight of tears above his lower lashes. "Basically, I know I've forgotten . . . everything. But I don't remember, I just . . . read it in a book, actually, so . . . I just thought you should know," he finished lamely.

Both Lupin and Sirius stood up at once, Sirius so quickly his chair fell over. "What. . . ?" he asked, eyes glancing to Harry, then to Hermione, then back again, black brows knotting in alarm. He looked torn, as though he wanted to rush over to Harry, but was afraid to—and Harry had never seen Sirius look even slightly afraid before. Now he was looking at Harry as though his godson was a bomb about to go off.

Then Harry got it. "It's all right," he tried to assure his godfather, his throat dry. "Hermione said what happened to you, how you were . . . innocent."

"We've been here talking half the night," said Hermione's voice at his side.

But he barely heard her; all at once, the fact of what had been done to Sirius was hitting Harry. Sirius had been imprisoned for something he hadn't done. He'd been called a Death Eater by the world when he'd never have betrayed Harry's father, whom he loved. How many years of Sirius' life had been taken?

Suddenly, Harry realized that Sirius' arms were clasped around him, trembling almost imperceptibly; the velvet lapel of Sirius' dressing-gown was crushed into his cheek, still carrying that hint of embers that was always Sirius' smell.

Burying his knuckles in the back of Sirius' dressing-gown, Harry sobbed for the time they had both lost.

* * *

**Author's note**:

1. Hope this wasn't too overly dramatic, but I think it's reasonable to be a bit emotional when you've just found out your parents were murdered, your entire life is a lie, and it's your job to defeat Wizard Hitler. Still, I promise that MANLY TEARS will not become a constant presence in this story.

2. Reviews are nice. I'd really like to know your thoughts on developments so far and your predictions for where the story's going to go. (Thanks, DeliaDee, for yours. What you saw in the chapter was exactly what I was trying to achieve, so I'm pleased about that.)

3. Points for spotting any "echoes" in the previous chapters.


	8. Two Conclusions

At last, Harry pulled away from his godfather, and Sirius quickly conjured up a handkerchief for him to blow his nose into. Strangely enough, he didn't feel embarrassed, as he might have expected. In the clean-feeling early morning light, he just felt quite calm, as though he'd used up his supply of emotion for the moment. Looking around, he noticed that Lupin and Hermione had gone; they had probably tactfully departed long ago.

"Dumbledore will want to see you," said Sirius gently but practically. "He's probably already on his way; I'm sure Remus wrote him before he took Hermione back."

Harry understood. "I know," he said, looking up at his godfather again. Dumbledore was the strongest wizard on the side against Voldemort, and Harry's well-being was no longer solely his own concern. Although, he corrected himself, it hadn't been for fourteen years. It was much easier to think of the Harry of the encyclopedia, the Boy Who Lived, as _the other Harry_, than to try to imagine all of these things having happened to _him_.

Sirius was looking toward the door. "_Accio _Harry's trunk," he said enigmatically, with a wave of his wand.

"Er . . ." said Harry, worried. Was he going to have to leave with Dumbledore?

Then a large trunk slammed past the kitchen door and thunked onto the table. Harry recognized it as the same type as the one currently holding his old grey school uniform and the few sad scraps of possession Lupin had brought from his bare room at Privet Drive, but it wasn't the same trunk. "That's not mine," he said.

"No, it is. It's all yours," said Sirius. His smile widened, bracketed by two deep dimples in his cheeks. "Whoever did the Memory Charm on you just put all of your things in it, locked it, and pushed it under the bed, presuming that, even if you saw it, you'd have no idea it belonged to you. Remus found it there." He waved his wand at the charm; Harry heard the lock open. "Go on," Sirius encouraged him.

Harry stood up and pushed the trunk's lid open. His mouth dropped open. The trunk was crammed full of old textbooks, curls of parchment, and unfamiliar clothing, not to mention odd items like some gold binoculars, a glinting silvery thing, something mechanical and lumpy stuffed in a sock, lots of little cards with faces on mixed in everywhere, and, just poking through, what seemed to be the top part of a cauldron.

All his.

Harry ran his finger alone the binding of a well-worn book titled _The Handbook of Do-It-Yourself Broomcare_. He must have paged through it a lot, his fingers wearing down the edges of the parchment and the corners of the covers.

He pulled on a long red sleeve and was rewarded with an apparently home-knitted jumper, emblazoned on the front with something golden. "Mrs. Weasley," Sirius said softly, as Harry spread the jumper out on the table to see what the golden thing was. It was a lion--the symbol of Gryffindor, Harry thought.

"What's this?" Harry asked, touching the silvery piece of fabric.

"Look," grinned Sirius, whisking the silvery thing out of the trunk and around his shoulders. Suddenly, his head was floating alone in the middle of the kitchen.

"Brilliant!" Harry squeaked, his eyes huge.

"This was your dad's," said Sirius, taking the Invisibility Cloak off again and handing it back to Harry.

Harry folded it carefully and put it back in the trunk among his other things. _His_ other things. Looking at them all now, Harry tried to decide whether he might have recognized this trunk as belonging to him just by what was in it. Did anything about this collection of things mark it recognizably as his? It was difficult to tell. Perhaps the trunk very much typified the other Harry.

In any case, there was one thing that should have been there and didn't seem to be. "Sirius?" Harry asked, turning back to his godfather. "I had a wand before, didn't I?"

Just then, he heard measured footfalls in the hallway. The next moment, Dumbledore was walking through the kitchen door. Every time Harry'd seen him before, the old man had been so good-humoured and bubbly; now he looked more solemn than Harry could have imagined. "You did have a wand, Harry," said Dumbledore heavily. "But it was taken from you when your memories were altered. We think it happened while you were outside, in a park near your aunt and uncle's house. Their memories were also altered; we assume that was done at the same time, while they were at home."

Harry closed the lid of the trunk.. He'd gone to the park a few times. But there had been one time, hadn't there, just before Uncle Vernon had insisted he get a job, when . . . he'd sat on the swings for ages . . .

"Hermione said you knew a way to get my memories back," Harry said.

Pulling out a chair next to Harry, Dumbledore sighed. "Yes, I do," he said. "But I would prefer to use it only as a last resort. We are still trying to identify the spell used on you so that we can reverse it in a less risky manner."

"Why?" asked Harry. "I mean, what does your way do?" He bit his lip.

"I have not yet disclosed the details of the spell to anyone," said Dumbledore after a moment. He looked at Harry over his half-moon glasses. "But it pertains to you, and you ought to know what it means. I trust that you, and you, Sirius, will not share this information beyond we three?"

"I won't," said Harry.

"I won't tell Moony," said Sirius, slightly moodily.

"Very well," said Dumbledore. And, steepling his fingers together, he told them.

Harry took a deep breath. "How long will we keep looking for another way before we use _that_ way?" he asked.

Dumbledore took off his glasses and began to polish them on his sleeve. "We were rather hoping it wouldn't come to that," he said quietly. Somewhere outside the window, birds were chirping, and Harry thought he could hear the beginning of the rush hour roar.

"I think we should do it now," said Harry, looking at Sirius.

Dumbledore looked concerned. "Harry, I know you must very much want to remember, but--"

"That's not it," said Harry, frowning at the table as he tried to explain in a way that would make sense. "I think, even if what you said happens . . . well, it's okay. Hermione said that Voldemort was coming back faster than anyone had thought, and . . ." He almost stopped, abashed, but decided to plough on. "As far as everyone says, it seems to be sort of up to me to stop him, right?"

Before Dumbledore could say anything, Sirius said simply, "Yes."

Harry looked up at him. Sirius closed his eyes for a moment before going on. "The reason Voldemort tried so hard to kill you was that there was a prophecy about you. It said you were _the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord_."

"But, Harry, you're only fifteen," Dumbledore interrupted firmly. "Angry as you are about what's been done to you, you mustn't try to fight Voldemort or any of his followers yet."

"No, I won't," said Harry, confused. Anger was much too small a feeling for something like this. Aunt Petunia got angry when the girl across the street was playing Oasis at top volume at one in the morning.

Harry just . . . wished it all hadn't happened.

"But, anyway, what I meant was . . . if it's all up to me, then . . . I've got to be ready, I think," he said. "And . . . I should be going to Hogwarts in September, right?

"Of course," said Sirius.

"Well," persisted Harry, "I can still do some spells, but . . . I don't remember anything I learned. I don't think I can catch up four years' worth of school in two weeks."

"You're right," said Sirius, as though he hadn't thought of that. "Albus, I agree with Harry."

Dumbledore looked grave. "I shall leave the choice up to you, Harry," he said gently, at last, "since it concerns you most of all, but I would like you to consider your decision for one more week. We may find another solution before then, and Hogwarts does not open for another ten days."

"All right," said Harry, swallowing. He hadn't actually expected Dumbledore to leave it up to him.

Dumbledore stood up to leave, and Harry, recalling suddenly that this famous, powerful wizard was also his headmaster, said, "Thank you--Professor."

"I should tell you that I blame myself for your situation," said Dumbledore, turning to face Harry again. With a shock, Harry thought that, for the first time, Dumbledore was moving like the old man he was. The bright blue eyes were hazy now, rather than twinkling. "I had thought that I had ensured your safety while you were with your relatives. I was wrong."

"It's all right," Harry assured him awkwardly. Recently, he seemed to have the ability to make everyone around him burst into tears.

"Thank you," said Dumbledore. "In a week, then, Harry. And, pardon me for not saying it earlier: good morning." Down the corridor, Harry heard Grimmauld Place's door close quietly behind him.

"Harry, are those yesterday's clothes?" said Sirius suddenly.

"Yeah," admitted Harry, looking down at his T-shirt.

"You haven't slept at all, have you?"

"No," admitted Harry again.

"Come on," said Sirius. Taking Harry by the shoulder, he led him up to his bedroom. Now Sirius had mentioned it, Harry could feel the exhaustion settling in his feet, aching behind his eyes.

"Up all night!" tutted Harry's mirror.

"Shut up," Sirius snapped at it.

Harry drew his legs up onto the bed; as soon as his head settled into the pillow, he felt sleep draining his consciousness.

"Have you still got that jumper?" Sirius noticed, amused. Indeed, Harry felt the softness of the red jumper in his fingers. He must unthinkingly have brought it with him. He began to answer Sirius, but before he could . . .

With his wand, Sirius drew the curtains closed against the morning light. He noiselessly snuck away back down the stairs.

* * *

"I can't believe you didn't tell us when you got the letter!" huffed Ron, his arms crossed. "And, even then, you waited for Mum to tell us all!"

"Well, I'm sorry, Ron," said Hermione tiredly. "But I think we should concentrate even more on our research, now that Harry knows."

"Yeah, all right," said Ron, "but that's not the point."

"Actually, I agree with Ron," said Ginny, who was perching on the arm of Ron's chair. "Harry's our friend too."

Hermione ran her fingers through her hair, rendering it even bushier. "Harry wrote to me, it was private. Anyway, I've already been told off for not telling your mum or dad or someone."

"Well, you should have told _us_," muttered Ron, unsatisfied.

"Are you lot done bickering?" said Fred, striding into the sitting room.

"We've got something you might find interesting," said George behind him, waving the _Daily Prophet_.

"What is it?" said Hermione, jumping off the sofa to look at the newspaper in George's hand. It was folded to show a tiny article on the seventh page, squashed next to an advert for Gladrags Wizardwear.

"Three more witches and wizards have suddenly moved away," Fred informed the rest of the group.

"But two of them were Obliviators," said George, dropping the bomb. "It doesn't say so, but we recognized the names. Apparently, they said they were taking their holidays and never came back."

"Well, you know what Dad will say," said Ginny, pacing. "Fudge's trying to squash the news that Voldemort's back, but some people don't believe him, and they're afraid. They reckon they'll take off to Majorca until the problem's taken care of."

"Yeah, and most of them probably _are_ doing that," interjected Ron. "Gits."

"Or they're being attacked or intimidated," said Hermione tightly. "But, look, we decided that Obliviators didn't have this kind of long-term Memory Charm anyway--that it was probably some sort of ancient very Dark spell."

"It's still a little suspicious, Hermione, don't you think?" said Ginny, her lips pursed.

"You're right," said Hermione, after a second. "Besides, it's the only lead we've got."

"Says here one of them was supposed to be on holiday in the Lake District," George read out.

"Well, Mum and Dad will never let us go there," said Ron with displeasure.

"We could go anyway," Ginny pointed out. "Via broom, it's not that far."

"Yeah," said Ron, perking up. "We could have a look at his house, see if he left anything, talk to the neighbours."

"No, we can't!" said Hermione in horror. "We might be talking about Death Eaters, or people under the Imperius curse, which is practically the same."

"What?" said Ron incredulously. "Look at all the stuff we did with Harry!"

"But Harry's not here," said Hermione, looking very harassed. "Why can't we just tell your mum and dad and let the Order do it?"

"Sorry to point this out to you," said Fred, "but we _are_ members of the Order now." He waved his hand, indicating Dumbledore's bottomless school trunk (back in its place in the middle of the floor, now that Harry had gone). "Dumbledore gave us all those books from the Restricted Section, _and _information they nicked from the Ministry."

"Exactly!" said Hermione, going red. "If we go running off now, they'll never trust us again. We'll _never_ be allowed to do anything for the Order again."

"Funny how you're so bothered about that _today_," shot Ron.

"Well, I don't have a perfect answer!" shouted Hermione, standing up. "But we're not first-years any more, Ronald!"

"What on Earth is going on here?" Five pairs of eyes snapped to the doorway, where Mrs. Weasley stood glowering like an unappeased goddess.

Several seconds passed without anyone saying anything, and Mrs. Weasley was just taking in a breath to shout again when Ginny took the newspaper from George and showed it to her mother. "We think this might have something to do with the attack on Harry," she said.

"Monaghan and Thorpe were both on this year's Obliviator payroll," explained George.

"Oh," said Mrs. Weasley, shrinking back to the size of a normal woman. "I don't think anyone had noticed this. We've all been so busy with--everything else . . . but I'll mention it at the next meeting."

"We could take the tent and go camping in Cumbria, and perhaps we might run into Monaghan if he's still around," suggested Ginny innocently. "After all, Mum, you were saying you could do with a break, weren't you?"

"Well," said Mrs. Weasley, to whom the idea obviously appealed, "I'll think about it. Your father won't be able to get time off work, but . . . we'll see what the Order says. I'll send Kingsley an owl . . ." She went back to the kitchen, still looking at the article.

Ron cleared his throat.

"How was Harry?" asked Ginny, sitting beside Hermione on the sofa.

"Just . . . very quiet," said Hermione. Stifling a yawn, she picked up the book she'd been reading.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake, go and have a nap," said Ginny, rolling her eyes as she took the book from Hermione. "We know you were up practically all night."

"All right," said Hermione grudgingly, starting up the stairs.

* * *

**Author's note**:

1. A short chapter today, sorry. We're in a bit of an interim . . . you can't have high drama all the time, but the pace is going to pick up soon. ; )

2. Reviews are nice.


	9. Two New Paths

Harry flicked his wand, and another puff of dust billowed out of the long green velvet curtains. This room, which had only been opened up yesterday, was still stuffy; in the sunlight through the open window, dust and flies floated idly together in the heat. Harry ran the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead. Through the open window, he could see rows of roofs, backed by the height of skyscrapers. Harry wasn't sure when the sight had become familiar, but it was now.

"Tired?" asked Sirius, turning from the suspiciously overgrown spiders he'd been cleaning out of the mouldings on the ceiling to face Harry, his wand thoughtlessly twined in his fingers at his side as he ran the other through his sweat-spiked hair. There were a few smudges of ancient grime across his forehead and chin. He still had those hollows underneath his eyes, a little, but he seemed much more normal-looking than when Harry had first met him: almost just an ordinary, rather good-looking wizard, doing some cleaning. "I was thinking we'd pack it in sometime soon," he added, not quite managing to disguise his own eagerness for the idea.

Harry smiled. "I was hot, that's all," he said, conjuring a little blaze of sky-blue flame to sit in his palm. As he held it up, cool air wafted toward his face, and he closed his eyes in enjoyment.

Then, suddenly, something tiny and fluffy but very hard hit him in the forehead, and he tumbled over. Looking up, he saw Ron's owl, Pigwidgeon, circling his head. He reached up and took the large parchment envelope from the little owl's talons.

"Oh, it's you!" Sirius said with amusement to the little owl, which fluttered up to his shoulder and dropped there cheerfully.

Harry got up from the floor and, opening the letter, sat down again on a very hard upholstered chair. "It's from Hermione," he told Sirius.

_Dear Harry_, it said,

_How are you? I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye the other night. _

_We've been working really hard on researching your spell, anyway, but we haven't found anything yet. We're not giving up, though.  
_

_We're all going on a camping trip tomorrow, but we'll be back in a few days. Perhaps you can come over again then and we'll tell you all about it. We all wish you could come, but Dumbledore said it wasn't safe. I know you would have loved going camping and looking for mermaids in the lakes.  
_

_Anyway, we all miss you. Say hi to Sirius for us.  
_

_Hermione_

"Hermione says hi," Harry relayed to his godfather, summoning a quill and parchment from downstairs.

_Dear Hermione, _he wrote in reply,

_Thanks for everything. Don't worry about leaving the other night. Hope the twins don't drive you bonkers on the trip.  
_

He sucked on the end of the quill for a moment.

_Say hi to everyone for me.  
_

_Harry_

"Do you think Pig can manage the return trip?" Harry asked Sirius, folding up his letter.

"Yeah, I think so," said Sirius, fondly tickling the owl under its chin. "Go on," he told it, shrugging it off his shoulder. It swooped toward Harry, picked up the letter, and bobbed back out of the window.

Then Harry heard a faint sound in the downstairs hallway; Sirius perked up and said, "Moony's home."

Harry folded Hermione's letter and put it in his jeans pocket. _We all miss you_, she'd written. Just like when she'd first arrived at Grimmauld Place the other night: _Oh, Harry, we've missed you so much_. He'd felt like an impostor.

They had all been so nice about it.

Suddenly, something pinched Harry on the arm, and he looked up to see his godfather lowering his wand and scrutinizing him from the doorway. "You coming down?" asked Sirius, again looking concerned.

"Yeah," said Harry, jumping up to go with Sirius down the stairs and greet Lupin, who was shrugging off his suit jacket and hanging it up on the coatrack by the door.

"All quiet, then?" Sirius asked Lupin at once.

"As usual," confirmed Lupin, sighing. "Except that, when Shacklebolt came, he brought a message from Dumbledore."

"About Harry?" asked Sirius, frowning.

Lupin nodded. "Let's go into the kitchen." Turning to Harry, he said, "This might take a bit of explaining."

Once they were all seated around the table, Harry said, "Go on."

"Well," said Lupin, the lines under his eyes and around his mouth seeming particularly deep, "you remember that you . . . defeated Voldemort as a baby."

"Nearly," amended Harry.

"Well, yes," said Lupin with a tired smile that seemed more sad than amused. "And you got your scar."

Harry nodded.

"A sort of . . . connection was forged between Voldemort and you on that day. That's why you have the ability to talk to snakes; he had that ability."

"Oh, my God," said Harry, appalled. He imagined a long acid-green string connecting him by the heart to Voldemort, and little pieces of personality running back and forth down it like electricity. He rubbed his scar. "So--what--?"

"All it means is that your head hurts whenever Voldemort's being particularly vile and evil," Sirius told him. "And the snake thing. That's all."

"But," said Lupin, "considering Voldemort's sudden tremendous return to power, Dumbledore is concerned that Voldemort could exploit the link and see into your mind."

"Oh," Harry tried to say, but it came out more like "ugh." Now he was picturing the green string running right through a hole in his forehead (in the middle of his scar) into his brain. It was quite horrible.

Sirius glanced up. "Dumbledore wants him to learn Occlumency," he realized.

"Yes," acknowledged Lupin.

"Occlumency is a way of stopping Voldemort from getting into your head," Sirius explained quickly. "Like shielding your mind. You can learn it."

"I'll do that, then," said Harry, ignoring the edge of nausea in his stomach. "When can we start?"

"I've never been any good at it," said Sirius frankly, "so I can't help you, Harry."

"I'm the one who's going to teach you," Lupin reassured Harry. "Beginning tomorrow."

"So you're off guard duty, then?" asked Sirius, the deep dimples sinking into his cheeks as he smiled.

"Can you please tell me what it is you're guarding?" Harry dove in.

"We're not supposed to," said Lupin, looking at Sirius.

"That's right," said Sirius innocently, glancing back at Lupin.

"Please," said Harry again, seriously. "Whatever it is, I can take it. I'll go mad, not knowing. Plus, it probably involves me, right?"

"Yes, it does," admitted Lupin. "But Dumbledore really doesn't--"

"Honestly, I've had it up to here with Dumbledore at the moment," said Sirius suddenly. "I'm so glad it's been eighteen years since school and I went to prison for nothing so that I can still do everything my old headmaster says." He was still smiling, but suddenly it was more like just showing his teeth. "I haven't forgotten that Dumbledore never even questioned my guilt, and if I hadn't broken myself out I'd still be in there."

On the hob, the kettle boiled shrilly. Lupin flicked his wand, silencing it.

"I know," said Lupin softly, his hand clasping his friend's fingers on the table. "But, Sirius, you _know _Dumbledore is far more than a teacher. He's our leader, and we agreed to let his wisdom guide us when we joined the Order. Anyway," he added, "when we were in school, when did you ever do _anything_ your headmaster said?"

"Well, exactly," said Sirius, wry again.

"Come on," said Lupin, unable to suppress a smile. "We're old now, you know."

"That's the point," said Sirius intensely. "Kids are supposed to do as they're told. _Grown-ups_ like us are supposed to think about what we're doing. And _this_ . . . is stupid."

Lupin rubbed his eyes. "All right, you win," he conceded, at last. "Harry, don't tell anyone I told you this, but we're guarding the prophecy that was made about you. Nobody knows the whole thing, only the part you read in the encyclopedia, but the entire prophecy is stored in physical form within the Ministry of Magic. We think Voldemort wants to steal it so he can hear the rest and maybe find out a way to defeat you."

"That's not that bad," said Harry in surprise. "It's not as bad as knowing I've got some sort of _connection_ with Voldemort."

"I think the concern was that Voldemort would reach into your mind and see that we know he's planning to steal it," explained Lupin, "but he'd've been able to guess what we were guarding even if we hadn't told you."

"Anyway, I'll know Occlumency soon, so it won't matter, right?" said Harry.

"I hope so," said Lupin. "I've had to gain some skill in Occlumency for . . . other spying I do for the Order, but I'm not an expert."

"That's all right," said Harry determinedly. "I'll do it." He'd be glad to have something to occupy his mind--and his time--until Dumbledore's arrival next week. He still hadn't changed his mind about the spell. "Thank you, Remus," he added.

"It's nothing, Harry," said Lupin kindly. "You were always one of my best students."

* * *

Lying in her bed, Hermione could hear the drizzle pattering on the roof of the borrowed tent. Mrs. Weasley was probably going to get Ginny and her up in half an hour or so, but Hermione was wide awake. She kept thinking about Harry's response to her letter.

_Dear Hermione,_

_Thanks for everything. Don't worry about leaving the other night. Hope the twins don't drive you bonkers on the trip.  
_

_Say hi to everyone for me.  
_

_Harry_

It was actually very like Harry, in a way. A little formal, the way Harry would write to someone he'd recently met, but sweet all the same. Harry was just one of those people who met people and liked and trusted them at once. That was why Mrs. Weasley loved him. That was why Sirius loved him so much, even more than he would have only because Harry was James' son. Who else would have immediately given such affection to a wild-eyed escaped convict? Really, that was the same way Hermione had first become friends with him. The troll thing, and then suddenly Harry had seen her as a friend.

Of course, then there was the angry Harry of earlier this summer, who'd known them well enough to send them angry letters complaining they weren't telling him anything. Hermione had hardly ever known anyone that well.

"Hermione?" Hermione started. It was Ginny's voice, coming from the next bed.

"Yes?" she ventured.

"You awake?"

"Yes," said Hermione, only rolling her eyes a little.

"It was me who told Harry about magic," said Ginny's voice. "The first night he was at Grimmauld Place. Mum had sent me to my room for having an Extendable Ear, remember? I got to go down for dinner, and Harry was there, and . . . I told him."

"Why are you telling me this?" said Hermione, only realizing after she'd said it that it sounded rude.

"I hadn't told you before," said Ginny. "Sorry."

"It's all right," said Hermione, rolling over to face Ginny in the dark. "What--what did he say?"

"He didn't say anything," said Ginny. "I showed him _lumos._ He . . . he looked at it like it was the most amazing thing he'd ever seen."

The rain slowed to an occasional tap . . . tap . . . tap on the roof.

"I can imagine him doing that," said Hermione.

"It feels wrong, him not being here," said Ginny. "I hate it."

"I know," said Hermione.

Outside, Mrs. Weasley clanged a pot, then muttered something to herself and stepped inside the tent, flicking the light on. "Time to get up, girls!" she announced. "You'll want to get showers before the rush."

Thus, Ginny and Hermione were already dressed and sitting in the damp morning air when the boys emerged from their tent, blinking and groaning.

"Mum, we'd like to go up to the village today," suggested Ginny, munching on the end of a sausage. "Look at the Mu--the, er, different shops."

"Yeah, I can't take any more walking," agreed Ron, massaging his calves.

"Well . . ." considered Mrs. Weasley. "You can go up for an hour or two. But no getting into trouble." She turned exaggeratedly to the twins. "Do not play tricks on the M--the people. And absolutely no you-know-what. And anything happens--"

"One of us Apparates back to tell you and the other helps the little ones to safety," droned the twins in chorus.

"Right," said Mrs. Weasley, her eyes flashing. "And if you do something that gets your father into trouble--"

"You'll use the Mincing Charm on us. Got it."

An hour later, Ginny was heading the party down the narrow pavement in the village.

"KFC. Ladbrokes. Tesco Express," listed Hermione with a sigh, watching the shops they passed. "You know, one of the best things about the wizarding world: small businesses."

"So, where is this bloke's cottage?" asked Ron, ignoring Hermione.

"Should be down this lane, I think," said Ginny.

"We're not actually going to confront anyone, though," reiterated Hermione. "If we see anyone, we just walk past like we're . . . like we have no idea who they are."

"Here it is," said Ginny, stopping in front of the small, old-looking house. It was the only one on the lane that didn't seem to have been kept up at all since it was built in 1800.

"Doesn't look like anyone's inside," commented Fred as they casually walked past.

"No smoke from the chimney," noted George, "and it is chilly."

They reached the end of the lane."Well, that was fun," said Ron grumpily.

"You know, if Harry had been here," said Fred quietly as they looped around and turned back toward the High Street, "we would probably have encountered You-Know-Who himself and barely escaped with our lives. I hear that tends to happen with you lot."

"If we'd had Harry's invisibility cloak," sighed Hermione, "one or two of us could have snuck up to the house and had a better look."

They turned back onto the High Street in silence, until Fred and George spotted two people coming out of the bakery.

"It's Monaghan and Thorpe!" whispered George, pulling the others behind a bus shelter. "Both of them."

"They're eating doughnuts," observed Ron, lifting an eyebrow.

Indeed, both rogue Obliviators were chomping into sugared doughnuts as they walked back toward Monaghan's house. Monaghan was taller, with a domed head going bald in the centre, like a monk. Thorpe was much shorter than him, with a severe dark brown bob and pink parka. They were dressed quite convincingly as Muggles.

Thorpe had obviously reached the jam in the middle of her doughnut: a blob of red remained in the corner of her mouth when she took her bite. Monaghan pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and, as she turned up to look at him, dabbed the jam away, then kissed the spot where it had been.

"Probably not Death Eaters on the run, then," said Ron, "unless they're _really, really_ good actors."

Fred and George were beside themselves with muffled laughter.

Hermione peered, and, sure enough, there were rings on both Obliviators' left hands. Monaghan kept touching his with his thumb, as though he wasn't used to it.

"We forgot the other thing people did before the last war," said Ginny in Hermione's ear.

"Run off and get married," finished Hermione.

"In that case, they're all right to ask," said Ginny, and before Hermione could stop her she had marched across the road (narrowly avoiding getting hit by several cars) and introduced herself to the newlyweds as Arthur Weasley's daughter.

"Yeah, I think I know him," said Monaghan, wiping a speck of sugar from his chin warily. "Nice bloke."

"My sister was in the same year as your mum, I think," said Thorpe awkwardly. "I'll have to ask her. It was either that or the year above."

"Actually," Ginny went on, "we were wondering if you'd noticed anything odd going on at the Ministry. Especially in the Obliviation Office." By this point, Hermione and the other Weasleys had caught up behind her. Monaghan and Thorpe were eyeballing Ginny, but they seemed more eager to get rid of the troupe of teenagers than anything else.

"Er," said Monaghan, "did you actually . . . follow us out here?" He glanced behind him.

Hermione took a deep breath. "I'm Hermione Granger," she said, stepping forward. "Ron and I" -- she gestured -- "are Harry Potter's best friends. You probably read about me in the _Prophet _last year," she added.

"Oh, right," said Monaghan, nodding in recognition. "You do look like your picture."

Hermione felt herself reddening slightly at what he must be thinking. "Most of that stuff was lies," she said hastily, "but I am his friend."

"We all are," said Ron firmly. "And we're trying to help him. Seems like the _Prophet_'s got it in for him worse than ever these days, and we know it's the Ministry."

Monaghan and Thorpe glanced at one another.

"And Voldemort _is_ back," said Ginny, her chin high. "No matter what Fudge says. Harry is right."

"Yeah, we thought that," said Thorpe in a low voice, holding her husband's hand. Some unspoken communication seemed to have passed between them, and they began walking back toward their cottage again; Thorpe nodded, indicating that Ginny and the others should follow.

"So we want to know what's going on," Hermione fabricated. The last thing she wanted to do was let out the secret of Harry's lost memories. "Why did you, er, leave?"

"Well, _you_ know what's been going on," Thorpe said, as though it was obvious. "Your dad works for the Ministry, right? Hasn't he talked to you about it?"

"He's only in a tiny department," said Ron. "But I guess he has said things are more . . . difficult."

"You should ask him about it," said Thorpe, biting her fuschia-lipsticked lip.

"What made _you_ leave, though?" pressed Hermione, hoping for a scrap of information about Harry.

"Well, same thing bothering everyone," said Monaghan nervously. "All they care about these days is loyalty to the Minister. Don't care if the work's getting done right."

"Gavin and I couldn't take it any more--we're leaving the country tomorrow," confided Thorpe, tucking her hair behind her ear. "It makes you paranoid. Missing records. People going off for Merlin-knows-what, and they can't talk about what they've been doing. Hushing things up."

"Hushing things up?" said Ron.

"They keep trying harder to prove You-Know-Who's not back, and the more they do, the worse it gets," added Monaghan, looking down at them. "It's madness. Look, kids: if you can get your mum and dad, and Harry, to get out of the country, do it while you still can, because we don't believe anything the Ministry says any more."

"We don't believe in them at all any more," echoed Thorpe. "Well, this is our house." They stopped in front of the cottage.

"Oh, right," said Hermione.

"Thank you," said Ginny seriously, shaking their hands. "We won't tell anyone what you said or where you're going."

"Please don't," said Thorpe, pressing Ginny's hand. "We just want to get away, that's all." She looked as though she regretted saying so much. "Well, good luck to all of you. And to Harry. We're for him, you know." And the two newlyweds hurried back inside the house.

"'We're for him,'" Ginny repeated, once Monaghan and Thorpe were out of sight. "But they're still leaving, aren't they?" She scowled.

They sat down for lunch around the campfire in a subdued mood that day. Although the day was growing considerably warmer, Hermione kept her jacket zipped up to her throat. "I can't believe the _Prophet _is still putting out all those stories about Harry being a liar," she said with a sigh. The younger Weasleys stared at her. "I suppose the Ministry's really taken control of what they say."

"It's terrible, what's going on in the Ministry these days," said Mrs. Weasley, her nostrils flaring.

"That they're hushing up You-Know-Who being back?" said Hermione casually.

"Well, of course, it's much more than that," said Mrs. Weasley. "I never thought I'd see it in my day. You know they just took away Dumbledore's position as the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, don't you?"

"They did?" said George.

"But nobody's better than Dumbledore!" said Ron indignantly.

"I suppose I've been a bit occupied with helping Harry recently. I haven't been reading everything in the _Prophet_," admitted Hermione, looking down at her hands.

"It's not always all in the _Prophet_," said Mrs. Weasley darkly. "The things Kingsley talks about going on in the Aurors' Department . . ." She shook her head, sniffing. "It was their fault, what happened with--with Percy. All because Fudge refuses to admit that You-Know-Who's back. That Percy thought he couldn't even talk to his own family . . ." She shook her head. "Now, if you say You-Know-Who's back, you're their enemy. As if Dumbledore would make up lies to get attention!" She went on in this vein for a while, occasionally interrupted by Ron agreeing on the unimpeachability of Dumbledore.

Mrs. Weasley led a hike through the hills that afternoon ("Arthur and I came here not long after we were married," she reminisced), although her rapid pace soon left her offspring a considerable distance behind her.

"So what was all that about at lunch?" Ron asked Hermione, as soon as Mrs. Weasley was out of earshot.

Hermione shook her head, almost as though she was angry. "I didn't quite get it before," she said. "How serious things were in the Ministry. Only hearing those two talk about how they were basically running away made me think . . ."

"Yeah, I knew they were saying all that rubbish about Harry, but I didn't really think about the implications either," said Ginny, stomping up beside Hermione.

"We don't pay that much attention to Ministry stuff, except as it applies to us," said Fred.

"Of course, we knew about Percy, but . . . he's always been a git," said George, looking to his twin, who nodded.

"Well, I've never read the boring bits of the _Prophet_," said Ron, hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets. "But, I mean . . . half of what the Order's doing is trying to counteract the Ministry's message, isn't it, really?"

Hermione swallowed. "Right," she said. "And it made me think . . . what if, looking for a Dark spell, we were looking in the wrong place?"

"What?" said Ron.

"I'd thought an Obliviator might be either a Death Eater or under the Imperius," said Hermione slowly. "I never thought before that the Ministry itself might really want to silence Harry enough to . . ."

They all stopped, halfway up the hill. "They can't be _that_ stupid," said Fred.

"Yes, they can," said George.

"It makes sense, though," said Ron. "Fudge's been doing everything to stop Harry from saying Voldemort's back."

"So they wipe Harry's memory," said Ginny fiercely. "That way, even if other people tell him, he doesn't remember. He doesn't remember Cedric dying. And Harry's too busy to go around talking about Voldemort."

"And Dumbledore was supposed to have put protections on Harry's relatives' house," said Hermione. "Against Voldemort."

"But they wouldn't have kept out the Ministry," finished Ron, looking at her. "The Accidental Magic Reversal Squad got in to deflate Harry's aunt, no problem."

"We can't jump to conclusions, of course," Hermione said, taking a deep breath. "This would be a big thing for Fudge to do."

"But it all makes sense," said Ron. "The magic was done at Harry's house on his aunt and uncle, but Harry never got a warning for doing magic. We all thought that was Voldemort being clever. But, of course, the Ministry could lift the watch on magic at his house for an hour."

"And then hush it up," said Ginny, eyes flaring.

"But this means the spell they used could have been a secret charm of the Ministry's--even something just invented, specifically for this," said Hermione, looking at her friends.

"We've got to talk to Dumbledore as soon as we get back," said Ginny.

* * *

**Author's note**:

1. Don't worry, at-kb is not dead! I merely ran out of juice. (Uh, copyright Lord Flashheart of _Blackadder_, there.)

2. Reviews are super, super nice.


	10. Two Risks

Spacious as his room's big guest bath was, the damp and chilly turn the weather had taken made Harry wish for the Dursleys' electric shower and warmed towel rail. As it was, he scrubbed his fingernails as quickly as he could and pulled new clothes on. Riffling through the trunk--_his _trunk--he'd found a pair of new trainers that fit him far better than the tiny old ones he had on, but, on second thought, had put them back.

There were all those jumpers, though, and it _was _cold. Comparing them all, Harry picked a bright green one. He'd never have dared wear a huge home-knitted jumper with a dragon on the front before--it would have been about four seconds before Dudley would have laughed himself sick and then beat him up--but it seemed normal here. And Harry liked the funny knitted dragon.

Of course, he _had_ worn the jumper before, he reminded himself. It was easy to slip up like that in thinking. The problem was that the memories seemed _so_ real. He kept thinking about his past, mentally weighing each moment. Sometimes he thought he could feel the difference between memories he knew were real and those he knew were fake: that time Aunt Petunia had cut off all his hair when he was little, for example, versus that time in Year Eight when he'd been knocked over by a bike on his way to school and had to walk the remaining four miles trying to ignore the blood soaking angrily into his sleeve. Then he'd had to convince the school nurse, yet again, that there was no point in trying to send him home. In the end, he'd spent the rest of the day sleeping in the cot in the nurse's office. It had been quite nice. But, looking back, it didn't feel quite real . . .

Then, sometimes, he had to count through the years to decide whether or not the things he was remembering had actually happened.

All the same, Harry liked the dragon. He pulled the jumper over his head and slid his wand into his back pocket.

By the time he got down to the kitchen, the Weasleys had already arrived, and Lupin was pouring the tea. Harry could feel his cheeks warming as all the red heads turned to look at him.

"Sorry," said Harry hastily. "We didn't expect the pouffe to explode when we moved it, or we'd've stopped cleaning earlier."

"Oh, it's fine," said Ron and Hermione at the same time, Ron clattering his teacup on the table.

"So, how was the trip?" Harry pulled out a chair at the table next to Ginny.

"It was . . . all right," said Ginny. "We came up with a new idea for what might have happened to you."

"Although Dumbledore doesn't think it's very likely," admitted Hermione.

"Well, that's good," said Harry awkwardly. He couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Oh, you're wearing your dragon jumper from Mum!" laughed Ginny, as Harry half-stood up to reach for the sugar bowl.

"Yeah, I liked it," said Harry.

"You know Mum made it especially for you because you faced one of those dragons, right?" Ginny asked him, biting into a jam tart.

"Did I?" said Harry. "When?"

"During the Triwizard Tournament," Ron explained. "The First Task was to steal a golden egg from a dragon. You did really well, so Mum made the jumper to commemorate it."

"Wow," said Harry. He couldn't recall even a trace of having done anything like that.

"It was exactly like that," said Ginny, poking her finger into the dragon on his chest. "A Hungarian Horntail."

"Ah," said Harry, searching for some sort of useful contribution to the conversation. "Apparently I rescued you from a Basilisk, too, right?"

This was patently the wrong thing to say. It seemed as though the fiery red of Ginny's hair and the fire-engine red of her jacket both faded suddenly. "Yeah, that's right," she said lightly.

"Not as fun as the dragon," said Ron grimly.

Luckily, Sirius strode through the door just then, and the conversation turned to greeting him for a while, which disguised the fact that Harry wasn't saying much.

Before, he'd imagined the rescue from the Basilisk as, well, a sort of St.-George-and-the-dragon situation, to the extent that he'd been able to imagine it at all. But now Harry felt sure something awful, not at all like that, had happened.

Whatever had happened, it was a link between Ginny and himself. Before, Harry had always treasured Hermione's offhand comment about having rescued Ginny. Now he felt a little guilty about that, because he'd obviously been very wrong.

But this one event in the past still connected him to her.

Harry realized that Remus was looking at him. "Oh, right," he said. "Um. I invited you all here because there was something I wanted to say."

Pale, they all nodded.

"I've decided to go on with Dumbledore's spell to get my memories back," Harry went on. "Later today, actually." He managed a smile. "So I might see you all again tonight and--you know--"

"You're not serious!" said Hermione, standing up and planting her palms among the dishes. "Dumbledore said it was dangerous--he's letting you do it?"

"Yeah," said Harry.

"What if something goes wrong, though?" said Ron. "I mean, you don't want to blow your head off or something, mate."

"It'll be okay," Harry assured them. "My head won't get blown off."

"You'd better tell us what happened right away," Ginny warned him. "Or else we'll just Floo over and see you."

"I will," Harry promised. He tried not to picture what it would be like, not to anticipate stepping out of the Weasleys' fireplace as their Harry, the old Harry.

Hermione was still biting her lip, but she didn't say anything else.

"Harry and Sirius have been doing a lot of cleaning on the upstairs," Lupin announced, to break the silence. "Why don't you come up and see? It's very different."

"Yeah, sometimes you walk through whole rooms without being injured," agreed Sirius, leading them out.

"What happened to the old portrait by the front door?" asked Ron as they entered the hallway.

"Eventually we just cut the brick out behind it," answered Lupin.

Harry ducked back behind the door and sat down again in front of his tea. It was cold. If anyone asked, he'd just say he'd gone to the bathroom, he decided.

He wasn't used to everyone's attention always being fixed on him, always having to make big dramatic decisions. It had been nicer--for him, at least--at the Weasleys' before, when it had been as though he was just a normal person.

"The door is over here," said Ginny from the doorway. "It leads to the hallway, which is where the stairs are, you see."

"Sorry," said Harry. "I just--" He shrugged.

Ginny sat next to him. "This reminds me of something, you know," she said.

Harry laughed. "You're right, it does," he said. "I wonder how I learned about magic the first time. I wonder if it was as nice."

"As I recall," said Ginny, "Hagrid picked you up from the Dursleys' and, I think, gave your cousin a pig's tail."

"Who's Hagrid?"

"Really big--I mean tall--groundskeeper at Hogwarts. Well, teacher now, actually. He's good friends with you."

"Oh, I think I heard people talking about him," said Harry. He realized again how much information about himself he was still missing. "Hey, Ginny?" he asked.

"Yeah?"

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Yeah," she said, pulling her feet up onto the chair.

"What exactly happened with the, er, Basilisk?"

Ginny looked at the table. "It's sort of complicated, but . . . basically, there was this Basilisk hidden in Hogwarts. Voldemort possessed me and used me to control the Basilisk to go through the corridors and--try to kill students. He didn't actually manage it, though, but in the end he just . . . well, we were in this underground place in Hogwarts, and he was sort of draining my life out, and then you came and found me and you killed the Basilisk with a sword. You almost died," she added. The early afternoon light caught the stray strands around her face, lighting them up as a copper haze. "That was my first year at Hogwarts. It wasn't very good."

"I'm sorry," said Harry, wishing he could say something more adequate. "But it wasn't your fault, if you were being possessed."

"It sort of was," said Ginny with a sigh. "Not that it was on purpose, but . . . I was taken in by something I shouldn't have been taken in by." She looked up at him. "Harry, if you're planning to get your memories back this afternoon, why are you asking about it now?"

"Oh," said Harry, feeling foolish. "Well, anyway, I wanted to know what you thought about it."

"It's just--" said Ginny. "You know, some people say, oh, when I was eleven I fell off my broom and knocked out my front teeth, how silly of me. When _I _was eleven, I got myself possessed by the Dark Lord and almost killed people. Sort of like that."

"But you were at school," protested Harry. "Dumbledore should have caught on and helped you. I mean, there should not be giant hidden reptiles in schools."

"Thanks," said Ginny. She smiled.

"Oh," said Lupin, who had just come through the door. "There you are."

"The jam tarts were so delicious, I had to have some more," Ginny said. "Harry thought so, too."

"I see," said Lupin straight-facedly. "Well, if you like, you can take some home with you."

"That would be lovely!" said Ginny innocently. "Thanks, Professor Lupin."

Not long after, Ron, Hermione and Sirius arrived (Hermione having become interested in the charm used on the exploding pouffe). Harry and Sirius made their goodbyes, and the Weasley crowd Flooed back to the Burrow.

Harry remained in his kitchen chair; as Ginny had taken the rest of the jam tarts, he was nibbling on the edge of a slice of Battenberg cake. It was too sweet, and made him feel slightly sickly, but he had to do something to relieve his nervousness or else he felt he might accidentally blow up the kitchen with magic. It was almost as bad as when he'd been waiting to get his wand.

Sirius sat in front of him. "Remus and Dumbledore and I have been thinking about what we'll do if the spell goes wrong," he said seriously.

Harry nodded.

"You can still decide not to do it, you know," said Lupin, next to Sirius. "Nobody will mind."

Harry nodded again, even though privately he had no intention of changing his mind. Hogwarts started next week, and Harry Potter was going to be there, _with_ all his memories, and the Wizarding World would see that Harry was fine.

The doorbell rang, once, in a very polite Dumbledore-esque way, and Harry got up to answer it.

"Good afternoon, Harry," said Dumbledore.

After that, everything seemed to have sped up; Harry couldn't keep track of what was going on, and he kept finding himself in the way while space was cleared in the middle of the dining room. At last, a large oblong packaged object was floated in and landed in the exact middle of the floor. With a whisk of Dumbledore's wand, the packaging flew off, to reveal a tall, rather ornate, full-length frame that looked like it was a mirror, facing away from everyone assembled.

"Now, everyone, please be careful not to step in front of the mirror," warned Dumbledore with his usual cheerful formality. He turned to Harry. "We were rather lucky to obtain one of these," he told him. "They're quite highly valued. Luckily, I was able to find a private auction by a family in Denmark."

"Then--it's a magical mirror?" asked Harry.

"Quite right," said Dumbledore. "Mirrors have an entire class of magic devoted to them, ranging from the friendly speaking mirrors you've encountered here to mirrors that show you, let's say, your heart's desire. The higher end of those magics can be extremely powerful."

"What does this mirror show you?" asked Harry, feeling the question was rather required of him.

"Your true self," said Dumbledore gently. "Combined with a somewhat ancient spell, the mirror can be used to restore people to their true selves in various ways, as long as a modicum of the real self remains--which, in your case, it does. For example, the spell can reverse certain potent love potions for which there would otherwise be no antidote. For you, the spell can bring back your old self, meaning your old memories, as they are not gone--only hidden."

"All right," said Harry, breathing out slowly.

"However," said Dumbledore more solemnly, "as I cast the spell, it is _extremely _important that you attempt to accept the other self you see in the mirror. Recognize it as yourself."

"I will," said Harry with determination. _Recognize it as yourself_? Did that mean it wouldn't look like him?

In any case, he told himself, he _would_ accept it. Even if it was something he didn't like. Or a stranger.

"Do you have any questions?" Dumbledore asked him. "You're certain you want to go through with it?"

"Yes," said Harry. "I definitely do want to do it, and I don't have any questions."

"Very well," said Dumbledore. "Please cross the room and stand in front of the mirror."

"Good luck, Harry," said Lupin.

"You'll be all right," Sirius told him.

The dining room had never felt so large. Walking over the now bare floorboards to the mirror was worse than trekking to the North Pole. At last, steeling himself, Harry turned to look in the mirror.

The reflection was . . . him. It looked just like him, but now, as he continued to look in it, he saw the background changing, although his own reflection stayed in the middle of the mirror.

He saw a far younger version of himself, walking into a pub with an enormous black-bearded man (Hagrid?). A smaller man in a top hat darted forward and shook his hand, and the whole pub craned to stare, as though he were a celebrity . . .

He saw himself diving on a broom, and a classful of faces looking up, amazed . . . and he was shouting with joy . . .

He saw himself screwing up his face and downing what must have been a horrible drink; then, his body was changing, growing thicker. Harry desperately wanted to know what this memory was about, but it faded . . .

He saw himself with Lupin, and Lupin seemed to be telling him off! He took a piece of parchment from Harry, and Harry--slightly older now--stared at his feet, looking deeply despondent.

He saw himself in what seemed to be a dirt tunnel, talking with--was that Sirius? A man with long, dirty hair--yes, that _was _Sirius. It was the man he'd seen on television--and Harry was saying something to him, and suddenly Sirius was his Sirius again, and Harry was smiling . . .

He saw himself ushered into a room with three far older students, if they were students. One was a beautiful girl with long, blonde hair . . . but now there was an argument going on, and the blonde girl was scoffing at Harry.

_That's me_, Harry told himself. _That's me. I recognize myself. I see me. _He felt a deep pull on himself, not on his body but on the self he felt return to his body when he woke, his mind, and repeated faster, _It's me. It's me in the mirror._

He saw himself, spattered with mud and weeping, being dragged away from a crowd by what looked like the terrifying old man Harry had seen once in the kitchen.

_That's me_, Harry thought. _It's me_.

But the mirror was cracking, first a tiny crack at the edge and then a widening gash heading for its other side, in a shape Harry hazily thought seemed like his own lightning scar.

"Harry!" shouted Sirius from behind the mirror, but it was too late.

With a dull, reverberating sound, the mirror snapped, and Harry felt himself falling, with perhaps, at the last spark of consciousness, a pair of arms closing around him.

* * *

Author's note:

1. Thanks to DeliaDee for her always helpful crit. Chapter 9 has now been edited and is hopefully less entirely dreadful! : )

2. Did you like the Harry/Ginny ship time? (Incidentally, I don't actually ship Harry/Ginny. When I read, I'll generally accept anything written well, unless it's really heinous like Hagrid/Fleur's Tiny Sister or something. So I tried to cater to my own tastes, which was . . . writing it well. Well, I did say tried.)

3. Reviews are heaven.


	11. Two Revelations

Harry became vaguely aware that Sirius was kneeling over him, feeling his pulse at his wrist.

He opened his eyes just as Sirius glanced over to Dumbledore on the other side of the room. Instinctively, Harry looked toward the old man as well, just in time to catch Dumbledore waving his wand in the direction of himself and his godfather. At first Harry thought Sirius had vanished, but then he heard a low voice saying, "I'm here. Harry, can you hear me? I'm still here."

"I'm awake," said Harry hoarsely. He struggled to stand up by himself.

It seemed as though he, too, was invisible, or nearly so. Now he could just make out Sirius' outline wavering against the wall. Sirius took his hand and pulled Harry up to stand with him. Harry knew he was gripping Sirius' hand too tightly, but Sirius was holding his just as tightly, and his other hand was clasping Harry's shoulder to keep him upright.

"Harry, are you okay?" said Sirius in his ear, his voice slightly shaky.

"I'm fine," whispered Harry. "I'm all right. Really." He pulled the sleeve of his jumper over his hand, which was cold.

"Don't worry," Sirius told him. "We made a plan in case this happened."

"I'm not worried," said Harry, looking over to the place across the room where Dumbledore was kneeling. He could feel Sirius standing half-behind him, his burnt smell still there.

"Harry, can you hear me?" said Dumbledore softly, over the figure lying amid the shards.

"Du--I mean, Professor Dumbledore?" said the other Harry, sitting up. He was wearing different clothes than Harry--not the dragon jumper, but the Muggle clothes Harry wore at the Dursleys'. Harry thought his voice sounded different, although people were always surprised at the sounds of their own voices, weren't they?

"Hello, Harry," said Dumbledore gently.

"Wha--?" said the other Harry, adjusting his glasses. "I was just in the park in Little Whinging--where is this place? Did something happen?"

"I should say it did," said Dumbledore, helping the other Harry to his feet. "Are you cut anywhere?"

"No, I don't think so," said the other Harry, brushing the shards of mirror off his jeans. The remains of the mirror lay in two halves on the floorboards nearby.

"Then I suggest we go into the kitchen, where I shall explain the situation to the best of my ability," said Dumbledore. "And perhaps we can get some tea." The other Harry followed him out of the room.

"Do you want to go with him?" asked Harry, stepping away from Sirius as they both became visible again.

"Later, perhaps," said Sirius. "He'll want to talk to Dumbledore first."

Harry could hear his own voice faintly from the kitchen, interspersed with Dumbledore'--made more surreal by the state of the room, shards and halves of mirror still splayed out all over the boards.

"What's Dumbledore telling the other me?" Harry asked.

"He's you, but when he got his old memories back he lost the ones of this summer," Sirius answered.

Harry nodded. "That's good," he said, trying to keep his voice steady. "So it'll be as though everything's back to normal."

"Right," said Sirius gently.

"Dumbledore said it would be best," added Lupin.

"I know," said Harry.

"Harry, I know you wanted it to work," said Lupin. "I'm sorry it didn't."

Harry just shook his head. He didn't feel able to talk.

"It's all right," said Sirius again, gripping his shoulder.

"I know, really," said Harry at last. "Go and see the other me, okay? I know he'll want to see you." They hesitated. "Really," insisted Harry. "Go on. I'm just going up to my room."

Lupin studied Harry, then, apparently deeming Harry suitable to be left alone, sighed in acquiescence.

"I'll come up and see you later," said Sirius firmly, and then he followed Lupin out of the room.

Climbing up the stairs now to his room, Harry remembered the first time he'd done the same thing--on the night he'd arrived here at Grimmauld Place. He'd been wondering then whether Sirius himself might be a wizard.

He certainly wouldn't've expected things to turn out like this then, he thought wryly, looking at the worn and ancient bannister, where hands must have touched--hundreds, thousands of times, probably. In the history of the house, his time here had been so small.

His room was vaguely warm, with a mist of dust in the afternoon sun. He sat down on the bed.

On Halloween, when he'd just been a baby, Voldemort had walked into his house and diverted the course of his future, transformed every facet of his life in one moment. Then, just this summer, Voldemort, or one of his followers, had done that again: in one moment, managed to affect everything he'd do and feel from then on. And now, today, a few moments ago--there were still a few gritty specks of mirror stuck on his palms--his life had been changed a third time.

It felt strange, like finding you'd suddenly grown and all your clothes didn't fit (which had happened to him before). Your old jeans were too short. Your shoes were too small. The world had shifted.

And it couldn't be taken back to the way it had been.

But, all the same, he didn't regret it, because this time it had been his decision. And if there was now a Harry Potter who could walk through Hogwarts as everyone expected him to be, and show the Wizarding World a way to stand against evil, and remember his spells and his past, and defeat Voldemort, and be friends with Ron and Hermione and Ginny in the meantime, then it was worth it.

He'd had to do it, and he didn't regret it.

Just for a little while, this fantasy had touched him, and now it was gone he was almost more surprised it had ever been there at all than that it had left.

Then, as he sat staring at all the stuff in his room, a realization hit him.

Two trunks now sat, next to one another, in Harry's room: the older one with R.A.B. on the side, in which Lupin had put all of Harry's Muggle things from the Dursleys', and the newer one, with Harry's magical things.

He would have to separate his possessions.

Methodically, he moved the two trunks side by side and scanned the room for things he'd want to keep. The Firebolt--that would have to go to the other Harry. A heap of Weasley jumpers. Harry looked down at the dragon jumper he was wearing, and then decided--to hell with it, he was going to keep it. The other Harry probably wouldn't notice one jumper was missing.

His wand, in his pocket. Well, that was his. It might not even work as well for the other Harry, and in any case he was keeping it. The Invisibility Cloak, the new trainers, and any number of other magical things he'd gotten out of the new trunk--they all went back in. He'd have to get used to wearing a few big old Dudley castoffs again.

The textbooks he'd been using to brush up on magic. The other Harry wasn't likely to miss those, was he? They'd been buried in old salamander eyes at the bottom of the new trunk, and they looked as though they hadn't been touched for years. They went in the old trunk.

Brushing his hands together, Harry stood up. That was about it. He shut the lid on the old trunk and dragged it out of the room. There was the room Sirius said Ron had been staying in, down the hall. That would do. Pushing his fringe off his forehead, he began to drag the trunk, then realized what he was doing and levitated the trunk down the corridor and into Ron's old room, by now a little dusty.

He couldn't hear voices any more. The other him must have Flooed to the Burrow, as he'd promised Ron and Hermione.

The encyclopedia. Harry wanted that. He'd still been looking at it, when he had headaches and couldn't sleep, or just before bed. He went out to get it, and ran into Sirius into the corridor.

"There you are!" said Lupin, looking relieved. "I thought you said you were in your room."

"I moved all my stuff to that one," explained Harry. "I mean, just the stuff he wouldn't miss."

"Oh," said Lupin. "I didn't think of that, Harry. Good thinking."

Harry led them to the room he'd put his trunk in, and sat down on the bed, the dust in the air catching in his throat. "I can still stay here, right?" he asked tentatively.

"Of course!" said Sirius fiercely. He sat down next to Harry.

"Well, until the term starts," amended Lupin. "Dumbledore wants you to go to Hogwarts, too."

"What? How?" said Harry, baffled. People would hardly not notice if a new boy showed up who looked exactly like Harry Potter.

With a slight skeptical lift of his eyebrow at the idea, Sirius said, "He wants to you to go in disguise, under a fake name. Say you've been too sick for school up until now."

The same story they'd used for Sirius, Harry thought. "Why?" he asked at last. From a logical point of view, surely disguising him and trying to keep his real identity secret was more trouble than it was worth.

"Dumbledore says we can use as many voices on our side at Hogwarts as we can get," said Lupin. "Apparently, the Ministry's sending some awful woman to stop you all from saying Voldemort's back." Harry could almost have laughed at seeing Lupin drop his teacher persona for a moment, if the man didn't look so weary and worn. "Anyway, you've got to get your education, too."

Lupin might have gone to say something else, but Harry barely heard him. "Wait," Harry said, his hands appearing again from the ends of his jumper sleeves, where they had been clenching the knitted wrists into tight balls. "You mean, I'm really going to Hogwarts?"

"Yes," said Lupin, confused.

Sirius had talked about the practical jokes he and Lupin and Harry's father had played at Hogwarts; Lupin had talked about the lessons there, whole classrooms full of children turning desks into pigs or making potions to turns frogs into newts; and even on that day when he'd first met her, Ginny had talked about a magical castle by a lake with dungeons and towers. And even then it had sounded so wonderful.

He hadn't even really thought of himself going there for a long time--but now, when he did, he felt a thrill of excitement ringing through him. He was going to Hogwarts. He was going to Hogwarts.

Suddenly, hundreds of different questions jostling for place in his mouth. "Then--will I get Sorted?" he asked at last. "Or will I be in Gryffindor?" But before Sirius or Lupin could answer, Harry went on. "Do you think I can take the OWL classes--oh--I'll need to get books, and school robes, and a cauldron, and I wonder if I can get a second-hand broomstick?" He brushed his hair back from his forehead. "Sirius, you've got to come to Diagon Alley with me. They can disguise you, too, can't they?"

"I can probably persuade Dumbledore," said Sirius, breaking into a smile.

"When can we go?" said Harry breathlessly.

"Well," mused Lupin, "the other you is staying the night at the Burrow, but he'll be back tomorrow, so we reasoned you'd need to be disguised by then. I think the person is coming to do it tomorrow morning."

"So, after that," said Harry, trying to hide his excitement. Then he paused. "Who are we going to say I am?"

"I think we thought you'd be a Lupin," said Lupin, a little abashedly.

"The Black name is a little tarnished at the moment," added Sirius dryly.

"Also, if you pretend to be my relative," Lupin went on, "some people might suspect that you could be a werewolf. We'll play into that, using it as a red herring to distract them from the real secret."

Harry blinked. "Are _you_ a werewolf?" he said, lost.

Lupin looked taken aback. "You didn't tell him?" he said to Sirius.

"I left it up to you, of course," said Sirius. "Didn't you tell him?"

"No, I didn't," said Lupin, avoiding Sirius' glance.

"You're going to have to tell me these things if I'm going to pretend to be related to you, you know," said Harry with an exaggerated sigh. He wanted Lupin to know that his being a werewolf didn't matter to him. "Were all the Lupins in Gryffindor? I hope I am."

Lupin laughed. "They were, actually."

"You will be, too," said Sirius dismissively. "More importantly, our favourite Lupin here had a great history of innovative hell-raising at Hogwarts, which we expect you to live up to."

"Not too much, though," amended Lupin. "Best not to draw attention to yourself."

Sirius rolled his eyes, and the rest of the evening was spent making plans for Harry's entrance into Hogwarts. It was agreed that Harry would Floo to Grimmauld Place during the full moon (which sounded great to Harry) and that Harry would unarguably need a broomstick of his own (although Harry and Sirius could not agree on who would pay for it).

"Professor Snape, the Potions teacher, will probably dislike you," warned Lupin. "But don't forget: he is a member of the Order."

"And then there's Peeves the Poltergeist," said Sirius. "Don't trust anything he says, watch your head and your pockets while you're around him, and if you're doing breaking the rules and he sees you--well, run."

Harry nodded. "What's the difference between a poltergeist and a normal ghost?" he asked.

"Good question," said Lupin in a very teacher-like way. "Peeves isn't actually a ghost at all. You see, in order to be truly sentient--thinking and reasoning--something's got to have a soul, or at least be the imprint of a soul, as ghosts are. Peeves is more like a force of nature. The castle's been used as a school for thousands of years, you know, and all that magic use has effects on its surroundings." Lupin sighed. "It's rather difficult to explain. Magic isn't always completely logical. But Peeves is sort of . . . natural magical chaos, reacting against all the ordered magic performed within Hogwarts."

"Wow," said Harry, wide-eyed.

"He's not that bad, though," Lupin assured him. "You just have to make it so annoying or difficult to cross you that he moves on to easier targets."

"And I thought my old school was bad when Dudley put my head down the toilet."

"What's worse, when you're new, is the stairs that move," said Sirius. "When I was a first-year, I once got so lost I had to get a portrait of Boudicca to walk with me the whole way back. I never found that wing again, either."

"He's not joking," said Lupin. "I was there."

That night, Harry had trouble trying to clear his mind before bed as part of his Occlumency practice. It might have been easier if he'd known whether he wanted to bury his face in his pillow and shout with disappointment or elation. As it was, he felt on edge, and ended up quite tangled in the sheets with turning over before he finally fell asleep.

* * *

**Author's notes**:

1. Uhm . . . so, here's Mr. Twist. It's intended to tie in with the larger themes of the story, so . . . hope the change in direction doesn't throw you off. If you don't like it, naturally I respect your opinion. But I do reassure you that this story does have an end. It's not just going to waffle on forever with wacky antics and so on.

2. Remember, Harry, Sirius and Lupin (and Dumbledore) have been aware of this possible bad result from the spell since Dumbledore first told Harry about it. So, like the clever people they are, they've thought about what they'll do if it goes wrong. But, like Harry, they didn't really think it would go wrong.

3. I'm aware that the actual nature of the two Harrys (both a Horcrux? etc.) isn't clear, and I'm sorry to people who were unhappy about that, but . . . it's kind of supposed to be that way. It's a tantalizing mystery, you know? (Well, ahem, perhaps not.) Anyway, this is not to say that Dumbledore isn't aware of the question at least, if not of the answer just yet, and you will definitely find out eventually what exactly happened to produce two Harrys. I didn't just say, "Oh, let's have two Harrys, how jolly" and not think about the mechanics or implications : )

4. Reviews are nice to hear! Thanks to Fibinaci for the thoughtful review. I agree with so much of what you say! Canon Harry's intellectual laziness does drive me _mad_. But I'm going to try to resist the temptation to turn this Harry into someone who suddenly gets up at 4 a.m. to learn kung fu and the Animagus transformation and so on, either. I'm glad you said "curious and eager to learn magic," because that's what I was going for : ) Apart from being just a bit more contemplative and responsible after (as far as he remembers) being sort of a loner and having to do things for himself, I think our Harry is a bit more like Philosopher's Stone Harry, who _was_ curious and also had a snappy wit later Harrys sort of lost (remember how little Harry told Dudley the toilet might be sick since it had never had anything as horrible as his head down it? I miss that). And as for Luna's "awkward truths": yeah, I purposefully tried to put one of those in, since they're so Luna! And I was also interested in Ginny's perspective on the CoS incident, since it was pretty much her _entire first year_. Wow.


	12. Two Faces

_Quills and ink_, Harry wrote carefully at the end of the list.

"I think that's it," said Lupin conclusively. "I can't think of anything else."

Just then, the fireplace blazed, and Harry turned to see an iron-silver head emerging from it, belonging to an imposing bespectacled old lady Harry didn't remember.

"Hello, Harry," said the old lady briskly. "My name is Minerva McGonagall. You may call me Professor McGonagall." Her tone softened. "I am your Transfiguration teacher."

"Hello, Professor," said Harry, trying to be polite. He'd been about to say "Nice to meet you," but that probably wasn't quite right. Was there wizard etiquette for meetings between a person who'd lost their memories and an old acquaintance? "Thank you for coming to help."

"You're welcome, Mr. Potter," said McGonagall with a hint of surprise. She reached into her pocket and drew out a long, rather gaudy (to Harry's mind) gold chain. "Here you are." She held it out.

Harry took it, feeling it was expected of him, but didn't really understand. Hadn't she come to Transfigure his face?

McGonagall took pity on him. "All you need to do is put it on. Rather than Transfigure you, I decided to enchant the chain so that your appearance is altered whenever you wear it. That way, if you'd like to remove the disguise while you're back here during the full moon, I don't have to re-transfigure you all over again." Just as Harry was about to put the chain on, McGonagall added, "You, however, are the only person who can remove the chain."

Harry slipped the chain over his head; his whole face, and to a certain extent his skin all over, felt slightly numb for a moment.

Sirius whistled. "He really looks like he could be related to you, Moony!"

"I used some of my memories of you when you were around his age," McGonagall said to Lupin.

"It's very good," Lupin complimented her, sounding a little awe-struck himself.

The chain felt heavy on his bare neck, where he'd tucked it, underneath his shirt. His face felt strange, too, especially his eyes.

"Can I see?" Harry asked Sirius, steeling himself. Sirius nodded and quickly Transfigured an old copper pot hanging from the ceiling into a large square mirror, then handed it to Harry.

"Rather deft of you, Mr. Black," McGonagall commented. She arched an eyebrow. "Although you were always skillful at Transfiguration--even more so than I knew at the time, of course."

"Uh," said Sirius, and cleared his throat. Suddenly, his open collar looked silly, rather than debonair. Harry made a mental note never to get on the wrong side of this old lady who apparently had the ability to turn thirty-five-year-old ex-convicts into fifteen-year-old schoolboys--or perhaps your teacher was just always your teacher, no matter how old you got.

"Aren't you going to look?" McGonagall asked Harry.

"Oh. Right," said Harry, and held the large mirror up to look at himself in it.

The first thing he noticed was his hair, of course. It was very nearly Lupin's shade of light brown, rather than Harry's own black, and far less messy. Instead, it was now parting itself on the side, more or less. Perhaps this was because McGonagall had been using twenty-year-old pictures of Lupin, but it looked a tiny bit Seventies to Harry's eye. It was quite funny, actually.

His eyebrows, too, were light brown rather than black, and that alone made his face look much less--noticeable, perhaps. Harry's face was less thin, too--closer to Lupin's oval shape. And Harry's eyes, in addition to not being green any more, had also lost a little of their distinctive shape. Now they had that fold along the lower eyelid that always made Lupin look kindly.

Harry's nose and mouth were more or less the same, or at least had no huge differences. And, last of all, Harry noticed that his skin was a slightly darker color. Not that Lupin was tanned by any stretch of the imagination, but he was a little less pale than Harry, and the tone of the skin was slightly more tawny than Harry's, which tended to pink.

Harry thought that, if he met himself, he'd not only not recognize himself, but he'd probably think he was a nice person, an approachable sort of person, if not a memorable one. And he'd probably ask himself if he was related to Lupin.

"Cool," said Harry in summary, looking up at Sirius and Lupin.

"It's going to take me a while to get used to that," said Sirius, staring at Harry.

"That reminds me: here's yours, Mr. Black. One use only," said McGonagall, handing him another chain. "On that one I used a combination of yours, Remus, and some other features I chose at random. In case anyone spots you, you'll be good evidence for another branch of the Lupin family."

"Thank you," said Sirius formally, taking the chain and dropping it over his head. Lupin scratched his nose to disguise his smile; McGonagall had given Sirius almost militarily short hair--certainly the last thing Sirius would ever have chosen for himself.

"Ah," said McGonagall, catching Harry's chin and turning it up to face her. "We can't Transfigure your scar, unfortunately, so you'll need to apply this every morning." She drew a small pot out of her pocket and began matter-of-factly dabbing it into Harry's scar.

"Is that makeup?" Harry asked dubiously.

"It's witch's makeup," said McGonagall shortly. "Waterproof and rub-proof until you use tincture of witch hazel to remove it. Please don't forget to put it on freshly every morning."

"I won't," said Harry, feeling slightly cowed.

"Good luck, then, Mr. Potter," said McGonagall almost gently. "I was your Head of House before, you know. I hope I will be again. And be careful in Diagon Alley, please."

"I will," said Harry seriously.

"I'll see you in a week," said McGonagall, leaving the jar on the table, and with that she Flooed back to Hogwarts.

Sirius clapped his hands together. "Well, let's go, then!" he said energetically. "Floo, or Apparate to the Cauldron?"

"Apparate, I think," said Lupin. "It's all right going to Hogwarts or the Burrow, but we don't want to flag ourselves with Floo passages to Diagon Alley."

"All right," said Sirius. "Harry, you can't Apparate into or out of a wizarding house, so we'll have to walk just slightly onto the front step and Apparate from there. The Fidelius Charm will hide us there."

Harry watched Lupin step just over Grimmauld Place's threshold and then turn on the spot and vanish with a pop. "Hold on tight," said Sirius, and Harry grabbed his arm. "Luckily, I got rather good at Apparating while I was on the run . . ." He closed the front door behind them. The noise of London was suddenly bustling all around Harry, and he realized how long it had been since he'd left the house.

Then he felt as though he were being squeezed, very tightly. He felt nearly about to choke, but then the constriction loosened and Sirius was standing with him outside a small and shabby pub on a street in central London. "Here we are!" Sirius announced with a touch of pride. "The Leaky Cauldron."

Just as they had been outside Grimmauld Place, the passers-by here were completely ignoring Harry and Sirius. "Hidden to Muggle eyes," Sirius explained. "Come on, let's go in."

Lupin was already there, talking casually with the barman. The place was actually not that full, and Harry wondered whether it was always like that or whether this was a result of Voldemort's return, mostly secret though it was. "There you are!" Sirius called to Lupin as they walked in.

"This is my cousin, Geoffrey, and his son, John," Lupin introduced them. Sirius managed to hide his disgust at the names quite well this time, and gave the barman a neutral wave. "Well, we'd better be going."

"Good luck to you, and safe travelling," the wizened barman wished them, cleaning out a beer mug with a worried expression.

They walked through the back door of the pub to face a brick wall; Lupin took out his wand and tapped it, and the wall widened to show a street even busier than the one at the front of the pub, and far, far more obviously magical.

Harry had never seen so many witches and wizards all together at once before. He already knew that, alone, magical people tended to rejoice in eccentricity, but as a group they were quite dazzling: there went a witch in fuchsia robes and a foot-tall pointed hat with an enormous lizard slung over her shoulders (its tongue slipped out and snapped sparks into the air); there was a wizard with his young son, holding a string to which was attached, in order, a floating trunk, a floating cauldron, and a floating owl cage with a rather distressed-looking owl. There was a little canopied stall trumpeting DEFEND YOURSELF FROM THE DARK, bristling with whirring things and large-brimmed hats of unknown use. And then there were the actual shops, all with determinedly wizardly names and all proudly hawking their magical wares as loudly as possible. If the vague sense of threat Harry perceived in the DEFEND YOURSELF stall and the occasional person walking too quickly and nervously hadn't been there, the street would have had a carnival atmosphere, and Harry felt a twinge of sadness that the brightness of the street had been dimmed even a little by Voldemort and his Death Eaters.

"What do you think, Harry? Broom first?" said Sirius, surveying the panorama. Harry could only nod.

Walking into Quality Quidditch Supplies, he had no idea how good any of the brooms he was seeing were, but desperately wanted them all. The shop smelt wonderfully of polish and varnish and other arcane sporty things, and he couldn't stop looking from broom to broom (stopping to admire gadgets like speedometers you could fix onto the front of your broom).

"We could get you a Firebolt," Sirius offered, ushering Harry over to look at what was obviously the most expensive broom in the shop.

It was definitely nice, but--"What about this one?" Harry suggested. "Nimbus Two Thousand Three Hundred and a Half." The label on this one seemed to indicate it was a good mid-level brand.

"Are you sure?" said Sirius, lifting an eyebrow. "You can have the Firebolt if you want it."

Harry gave a shy shrug. "I don't really need it," he said. "It's not like I'll probably be on the house team."

"Well, the Nimbus is a good choice," said Lupin, lifting it out of the rack into Harry's hands. "What do you think?"

Harry weighed it. "Yeah, I like this one," he said, pleased.

"Just that one, then," said Sirius to the shopkeeper, and before Harry could say anything he drew a large bag of money from somewhere on his person and began pouring out large Galleons (even more than it seemed should have been in the bag).

Harry clutched the broom. "Thanks," he said, feeling his cheeks redden--although what they looked like now, in his disguise, he had no idea.

Sirius' money bag was back somewhere in his pockets. "Couldn't think of a better use for it," he said to Harry with a grin.

"Books next," said Lupin, pulling out a neatly folded list. "Since your original book list didn't, er, quite make it to you, we kept it."

Flourish & Blotts was a little further down the street; one or two family groups glanced at Lupin with interest, but nobody said hello. Harry thought again of Lupin's reticence in telling him that he was a werewolf, and wondered exactly how much being a werewolf mattered to wizarding people. Perhaps it explained a lot about Lupin's purposefully polite manner.

Then they went into the bookshop, and Harry's attention was diverted again. "Wow," he gasped, awed by the stacks and stacks of books, all explaining different aspects of magic. You could spend your life in there, reading, and still not know it all.

While Lupin and Sirius were showing the shop assistant the list, Harry kept being drawn further and further into the shop by tantalizing displays. _The Animagus Transformation: Theory and Advice from the Experts_, said one. Harry picked it up and saw a disclaimer in much smaller type underneath the title, saying, "Do not attempt the Animagus Transformation without the assistance of experienced witches and wizards. The authors are not responsible for any accidents due to unsuccessful transformations. Remember to register yourself with the Ministry as soon as you are successful." Harry reminded himself to ask Sirius sometime about becoming an Animagus. Honestly, of all the things he'd heard of to do with magic, it sounded like the most fun of all. Harry wondered, not for the first time, what animal he might be.

Then he spotted another title. _Duelling at the Professional Level_. He turned the book over. "Learn the tricks that will get you that edge over your opponent!" said the blurb. This one sounded handy for helping the Order. Perhaps another day.

Then Harry saw a thicker tome with big, friendly letters stating that it contained _One Thousand Handy Spells For Everyday Use_. He'd really have liked them all, but this would be helpful right away; Harry might be able to catch up on spells they taught in lessons, but he still felt he was behind on the in-between bits of magic that everyone else knew. "Can I get this, too?" he asked Lupin at the till, biting his fingernail.

With a glance at the title, Lupin said, "Of course." He opened it up and flicked through a few pages with interest.

Sirius pulled at the corner of the book to get a better look. "The Instant Wakefulness Charm! I've used that one once or twice." Sirius gave one of his quick barking laughs. "We'll take this book, too," he told the shop assistant.

And when he was holding his heavy package of books to his chest, walking out of the shop between Lupin and Sirius, Harry felt as though the books, and his broom, were the most precious things he'd ever owned.

They went on to get Harry a cauldron and supplies from the Apothecary, leading Harry to wish he'd gotten a book on the basics of potion-making as well as spells. Next were the Eyelops Owl Emporium and, nearby, the Magical Menagerie. Harry looked over the rows of owls, the tanks of toads and the roaming magical cats, but in the end decided nothing appealed to him.

Then Harry found himself in Madam Malkin's, which was by far the least enjoyable shop. Not only had he never been measured for clothes before, but the robes frankly felt like he was either wearing a dress or dressing up as a judge. Of course, they looked perfectly normal on Lupin and Sirius, but what with the big gaudy golden chain underneath his T-shirt, Harry felt a little ostentatious, and was relieved to walk out in his normal ancient Dudley-worn jeans and T-shirt.

According to Sirius, it was traditional at this point to stop for an ice cream at Florean Fortescue's, a proposition to which all parties cheerfully agreed. The weather was more typically British now than it had been in those unusual weeks earlier in the summer, but after carrying all his new things all day the icy air in the shop felt like heaven to Harry.

Once they were each carrying an ice-cream--pistachio for Lupin, a surprising vanilla for Sirius (though with lots of fudge and nuts), and chocolate with caramel for Harry--they sat (at Sirius' suggestion) around a table outside.

They ate their sundaes mostly in comfortable silence, since they were all worn out and there wasn't much they could discuss in public like this, anyway. The breeze was gentle, just enough for the day, and the hubbub of the crowds was almost lulling. A few pigeons that must have found their way here from Muggle London pecked at nothing on the cobblestones. Idly scraping the nuts and fudge from the surface of his ice-cream, Sirius was still taking in the street, its passers-by and its stretch of blue sky overhead with an almost hungry enjoyment.

This must be the first time Sirius had been able to sit like this here for . . . fourteen years.

And Harry had originally wanted Sirius to come for his own sake, not for Sirius'. Never having seen Sirius outside Grimmauld Place, he'd never really understood how much his godfather was the kind of person who needed space: room in which to expend his seemingly endless energies, both physical and mental; big public places in which to meet and talk to and charm people; fresh air and new ground to be discovered and duly charted and made his own. Of course, it made sense: wasn't Sirius' Animagus form a pack animal, a big dog you'd never keep shut up in a house without any stimulus or exercise?

Privately, and with a bitter pang of regret, Harry swore he'd convince Dumbledore to let Sirius go out again as soon as possible.

Still, at this moment Sirius looked almost contented. Even Lupin seemed less worn and lined than usual. For the first time in . . . well, in a long time, Harry felt that things were _right_. This was where they ought to be, here with one another.

* * *

When they at last got back to Grimmauld Place and dropped all of Harry's purchases on the floor under the hole in the wall where the curtained portrait used to be, they heard Hermione, Ron, and the other Harry talking in the kitchen. Whisking off his necklace and turning back into his normal self, Sirius glanced at Lupin and Harry.

Harry nodded once, firmly, and they headed on down to the kitchen.

"Didn't hear you upstairs, was feeding Buckbeak," Sirius said, striding in to greet Hermione, Ron and the other Harry.

Lupin went in next, and Harry tailed him. It seemed impossible that Hermione and Ron--not to mention his other self--would see through the subterfuge immediately.

But they didn't.

"So you're Professor Lupin's--what was it--cousin?" Hermione asked, standing up politely to meet him.

"Sort of distant relative, really," said Harry. "Um--nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too," said Hermione, with a friendly smile at him and then at Lupin. "I'm Hermione, I suppose Professor Lupin told you about us?" Any relative of Lupin's was automatically all right in her opinion, he surmised. Well, he would have felt the same way.

Harry nodded, not wanting to lie. He realized he ought to introduce himself properly, but it felt ridiculous. "I'm, er, John Lupin."

"Ron Weasley. Nice to meet you, mate," said Ron with characteristic awkwardness. "So--you'll be in our year, then."

"Yeah, hope I'm in Gryffindor," said Harry truthfully. Quite apart from everything else, he already knew people in Gryffindor.

"Ah, it's the best," said Ron proudly.

He turned to his other self--the interaction he'd felt most nervous about. "So you're Harry?"

"Hi," said the other Harry, with a small wave. Harry supposed the other him was either waiting for him to make some comment about his famous past, unhappy that Lupin had never mentioned him up to this moment, distracted by the revelations he'd heard last night, or all three.

Harry tried to think of something to say that didn't relate to the other him being famous. "We were just in Diagon Alley," he ended up saying lamely. "I got a new broomstick."

"Really? What is it?" asked Ron at once. "Harry's got a Firebolt, but actually I just got a new Cleansweep for getting to be Prefect."

"Oh, you're a prefect?" said Harry with what he thought was the appropriate appreciation. He knew Ron didn't usually get much attention.

"Well, yeah--Hermione is too," said Ron off-handedly.

"Oh, well done," said Lupin warmly. "I hadn't heard. I was a prefect when I was at Hogwarts, you know. I think Dumbledore thought it might convince me to restrain my friends a little. Of course, he was quite wrong."

Harry had to admit, he was surprised: he'd've thought Dumbledore would have named the other him as a prefect--and from the looks of it, his other self secretly thought that too, although he was trying to be good-sported about it. Now Harry felt crucifyingly awkward.

"So what make of broom did you get, then?" Ron persisted.

"It's a Nimbus," said Harry miserably, knowing that it was better than Ron's. "But I haven't really flown much, you know."

"Oh, with your illness," said Hermione with immediate sympathy. "Well, don't worry, I'm terrible at flying anyway. It's not like it really matters."

Harry wished he could Apparate away right on the spot, hopefully to some sort of deep hole.

"Oh, and--I was actually going to ask whether I could borrow one of you lot's first and second year Potions books, because--well, I haven't done that much magic, but I haven't done _any _Potions, and I don't really have any idea how to begin, so I thought I'd look at the earlier stuff before I went and, you know, try to catch up," he said, mentally cursing his sudden inability to get the words out.

"Mine's upstairs, you can borrow that," offered his other self at once. "Actually, you can keep it. It's not like I'm ever going to look at it again," he said darkly.

"The teacher is a git," Ron informed Harry.

"Remus said to watch out for him," said Harry, looking to Lupin for a moment.

"It's true: he hates Gryffindors," said Hermione. "You'd better catch up on Potions as much as you can."

"Of course, he'll be a git to you anyway," commiserated the other Harry.

"Technically, I shouldn't really let you say that about him," said Lupin with a half-smile. "But you should probably be going. Your mother will be wondering where you are."

"Oh, right!" said Ron. "Well, bye, Harry. Bye, John."

The other Harry nodded. "Bye. See you in a few days."

They left through the Floo, and Harry was alone with his other self.

"You know, I'm starving," said the other Harry suddenly. "What time is it?"

"Just around five o'clock," said Lupin, looking at his battered pocket-watch.

"I wouldn't mind some toast or something," volunteered Harry.

"Yeah, cheese on toast," agreed the other him. "Can we?" he asked Lupin.

"I'll do it," said Lupin, with what might just have been a very slight affectionate eyeroll. He stood up to slice the bread.

"Oh. I should put my things away," remembered Harry, and he headed back to the corridor where his new school supplies were still in a heap.

The other Harry followed him, picking up his new broomstick and a few books to carry upstairs. "This is nice," he said, admiring the Nimbus. "My first broomstick was a Nimbus."

"Ah," said Harry, struggling under the weight of his cauldron loaded with books and clothes. "Er--but I suppose the Firebolt is better?"

"Yeah, with certain things," said the other him. It was odd how different their voices sounded. Harry supposed everyone's voice sounded different to the person it belonged to than to everyone else, though. "Like just when you're braking, or a really quick turn."

They both deposited Harry's new school things on the bed in his room and then stood there for an uncertain moment.

"Remus told you about what happened to me this summer, right?" asked the other Harry.

"Yeah," said Harry. "I'm--that must have been really tough." Suddenly, he understood what had been bothering the other him. He had wanted to be certain that this stranger didn't believe the _Prophet_'s stories (of which Harry had seen a lot, since he'd been allowed to see the paper) about the Boy Who Lived being a dangerous, mad liar desperate for attention.

"Yeah," said the other Harry.

"Look, I--I know you were right about Voldemort being back, of course," Harry said quickly, in one breath. "And the Ministry's lying, and the _Prophet_'s just making stuff up, and all."

The other him looked up with genuine gratitude. "Thanks," he said.

Harry felt a surge of pity for his other self. He reminded him of being a little kid back at the Dursleys': being told you were a freak and a bad egg by everyone around you, just longing for someone to say that wasn't true. No wonder he looked so despondent. "It's okay," he said.

"YOU TWO!" shouted Sirius from downstairs. "FOOD'S READY!"

And the other Harry bounded down the stairs toward the kitchen again.

* * *

**Author's note**:

1. In response to Fibinaci: I totally do think the Animagus transformation is both cool and potentially very useful in facing Voldemort, and I'm baffled that more people in canon don't want to do it, especially Harry.

2. As I added in the notes for the previous chapter: unfortunately, the facts about what really happened to give us two Harrys are supposed to be a mystery. Guess away! Clues will be forthcoming.

3. Reviews are lovely. As you can tell, I like to respond to them. : )


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